
Book ,H4- 

PRESENTED BY 



'THE 



CHURCH AND THE AGE 



AN EXPOSITION OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN 
VIEW OF THE NEEDS AND ASPIRA- 
TIONS OF THE PRESENT AGE 




BY 

Very Rev. I: Hecker 

Of the Congregation of St. Paul 



TENTH THOUSAND 



New York 
THE CATHOLIC BOOK EXCHANGE 
1 20 West 60th Street 

1896 



,* GOPYKISHT, 1887,1 

By I. T. HECKER. 




PREFACE. 



Cardinal Nkwman wrote of Father Hecker shortly- 
after his death, in a' letter to Father Hewit, these 
words : ' 1 I have ever felt that there was a sort of 
unity in our lives — that we both had begun a work 
of the same kind, he in America and I in England. 
It is not many months since I- received a vigorous 
and striking proof of it in the book he sent me" 
( The Church and the Age ). 

In this book Father Hecker gives his reasons for 
believing that there is coming a notable spiritual 
awakening, that in the religious life of the American 
people this awakening will be strikingly manifested, 
and that the Catholic Church will have no small part 
in it, not only in fostering it, but particularly in reap- 
ing the fruit of it. The fullest exposition of these 
great life-thoughts is found in this volume. 

The original essay received many warm commen- 
datory approbations from dignitaries high in authority 
at Rome, and from the late distinguished Jesuit, Pere 
Ramiere. The first edition of the book received a 
very full and favorable review, endorsing all its prin- 
ciples, from the English Jesuit magazine, The Month. 

This present volume is made up of twelve articles, 
which fall into five general divisions. The first divi- 
sion, consisting of five articles, treats of the Catholic 
Church in relation to races, nations, and epochs, 
dealing with the subject at first in general, and then 
more particularly of Church and State in America, 
Italy, and France. The second general division, be- 
ginning with the sixth article, is mainly devoted to 
the concord of the interior action of the Holy Spirit 
in each particular soul with His exterior action in 



2 



Preface. 



the public authority of the Church ; it embraces the 
articles entitled respectively "St. Catherine of 
Genoa," " Catholicity and the Tendencies of the 
Age," and "The Experiment of Protestantism." 
The fourth division — articles ix. and x. — treats of 
orthodox and historical Protestantism, and the fifth 
— articles xi. and xii.— of Unitarianism and Transcen- 
dentalism. But as the same general principles run 
through them all, the articles have not been marked 
off into these general divisions, but are numbered 
consecutively from first to last. 

Intelligence and liberty are not a hindrance but a 
help to religious life ; only false religion has reason 
to fear the spread of enlightenment and the enjoy- 
ment of our free civil institutions ; while intellectual 
development and civil liberty have accelerated more 
than anything else the decay of Protestantism, they 
are calculated more than any other human environ- 
ments to advance at the present time the progress of 
true supernatural life among men. 

The main purpose of this volume is to show that 
the liberty enjoyed in modern society, in so far as 
it is true, and the intelligence of modern society, 
in so far as it is guileless, are inestimable helps to 
the spread of Catholicity and the deepening of that 
interior spirit which is the best result of true religion. 

The office of divine external authority in reli- 
gious affairs, in providing a safeguard to the indi- 
vidual soul and assisting it to a freer and more 
instinctive co-operation with the Holy Spirit's in- 
terior inspirations, is often treated of in this book ; 
and the false liberty of pride and error is plainly 
pointed out. 



CONTENTS. 



i. 

The Church, in view of the Needs of the Age 7 

The Question Stated — Remote Cause of Present Difficulties — 
Proximate Cause — Is there a Way out ? — Mission of the 
Holy Spirit — The Men the Age demands — The Church has 
entered on this Way — Twofold Action of the Holy Spirit — 
New Phase of the Church — Mission of Races — Some of the 
Causes of Protestantism — Present Saxon Persecutions —Re- 
turn of the Saxon Races to the Church — Mixed Saxons Re- 
turning — Transition of the Latin-Celts— Perspective of the 
Future. 

II. 

Relation of Church and State in America 64 

The Motive of Columbus and early Explorers — Freedom of 
Conscience in Colonial Days — The Principles of American 
Freedom are Catholic — Protestantism is opposed to them — 
Protestants are true Americans at the expense of their 
Creed — The Catholic Spirit favors Civil Liberty — The Finan- 
cial State of the Church here proves that she is in accord 
with our civil and social status — The American principles 
logically tend to make men Catholics. 



III. 

Cardinal Gibbons and American Institutions 100 

Text of the Cardinal's Address on taking possession of his 
Titular Church in Rome — His Office makes him our Repre- 
sentative — He has rightly interpreted our Institutions to the 
Old World, as Benjamin Franklin did during the struggle 
for Independence — St. Augustine on the dominion of Man 
over Man — The Church can flourish anywhere, but the civil 
Liberty of the United States is especially favorable to her — 
Civil Liberty as related to Man's co-operation with Divine 
Guidance — Testimony of the Martyrs — Why Europeans do not 
understand us — The incompetency of the American State in 
Ecclesiastical Affairs — Cardinal Gibbons's discourse suggests 
the power for good of a College of Cardinals constituted 
according to the will of the Council of Trent. 



4 



Cojttents. 



IV. 

Catholicity and the Italian People 115 

A perplexing Problem — The Unity of Italy — The Mission of 
the Latin Race — The Church not dependent on any Race — 
Authority and Liberty in Catholic Life — Italy and the Holy 
See — Impending Danger. 

V. 

The Church and France - 147 

Two Movements in the World — The Result of the Battle — 
Errors of Modern Philosophy — A new, united Christen- 
dom — The Kingdom of God on Earth — Promises False and 
True — Strange Destiny of France. 

VI. 

St. Catherine of Genoa 170 

She was an Example of the Concord of the inner and outer 
Action of the Holy Spirit upon the Soul — Her Soul was 
sanctified by the spirit in which she performed the Duties 
of the Secular State of life. 

VII. 



Catholicity and the Tendencies of the Age 181 

Science and Philosophy, and not Biblical Research, must shape 
our Polemics in future — This will continue the great work 
of the Schoolmen — Pope Leo's Statement : " Christ is the 
Restorer of the Sciences" — The healthful Tendencies of 
Modern Thought are towards Catholic Truth — Misconcep- 
tions of Catholic Authority — Obedience not the only Virtue 
— Different Virtues conspicuous in different Ages and 
among different Races — To say that the Essence of Chris- 
tianity is Authority is an Error — What the Essence of Chris- 
tianity really is. 

VIII. 

The Experiment of Protestantism 209 

The original doctrinal Basis of Protestantism is now rejected 
by Protestants — Luther's Appeal from Organic Christianity 
to Subjective Christianity — His view of Personal Judgment 
was distorted and irrational — The rational view of the com- 
petence of Personal Judgment — The Christian View of 
personal Holiness — Guidance of the Holy Spirit — The ideal 
Christian Church— The Divine and Human Sides of the 
Church — The Church can and does reform the Human 
Side — Luther was, in religious affairs, an Anarchist, not a 
Reformer. 



C 071 tents. 



5 



IX. 

Protestantism vs. the Church 234 

Is the Church made by Christians or by Christ?— Does Christ 
use the Church to make Christians? — The Office of the Bible 
in the making of the Christian — The Seeds of Fanaticism — 
An Organic Christianity is the logical sequence of the Incar- 
nation — The Church is the Body of Christ — Explanation of 
the Sacramental Life of the Christian. 



X. 

The Spiritual World and the Rule of Faith 258 

Connection between the Natural and Supernatural World— 
Not properly understood or even known by many intelligent 
Protestants— False Mysticism and Spiritism fruits of the 
Reformation— The Protestant Rule of Faith discussed. 



XI. 

Unitarianism and the Fatherhood of God 279 

Unitarian View that the Christian Church is still not properly 
organized : they believe that the)- have the task of its organi- 
zation — The true Church does not borrow Truth from Races 
and Civilizations, but imparts it — " What is the Unitarian 
Church for ? "—The Natural Man is not a Child of God — 
How he is made so — Relation of the inner and outer Action 
of God upon Man. 

XII. 

The Transcendental Movement in New England 300 

Every Heresy tends to mislead human Aspirations — Nature 
does not suffice for Nature — Transcendentalism an attempt 
to substitute the insufficient Light of Reason for the Ob- 
scurity of Heresy — Led astray by German Subjectivism — 
Calvinism destroyed by American Institutions — Transcen- 
dentalism the abortive Effort to set up the authority of Rea- 
son in the jurisdiction of Revelation — -The Catholic Church 
is the divine S3 T nthesis of all Truths of Reason and Revela- 
tion. 



I. 



THE CHURCH, IN VIEW OF THE 
NEEDS OF THE AGE. 



The Question Stated. 

J^HE Catholic Church throughout the world, 
beginning at Rome, is in a suffering state. 
There is scarcely a spot on the earth where she 
is not assailed by injustice, oppression, or violent 
persecution. Like her Divine Author in His Pas- 
sion, every member has its own trial of pain to 
endure. All the gates of hell have been opened, 
and every species of attack, as by general con- 
spiracy, has been let loose at once upon the 
Church. 

Countries in which Catholics outnumber all other 
Christians put together, as France, Austria, Italy, 
Spain, Bavaria, Baden, South America, Brazil, and, 
until recently, Belgium, are for the most part con- 
trolled and governed by hostile minorities, and in 
some instances the minority is very small. 

7 



8 



The Church and the Age. 



Her adversaries with the finger of derision point 
out these facts and proclaim them to the world. 
Look, they say, at Poland, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, 
Bavaria, Austria, Italy, France, and what do you 
see? Countries subjugated or enervated, or agi- 
tated by the internal throes of revolution. Every- 
where among Catholic nations weakness only and 
incapacity are to be discerned. This is the result 
of the priestly domination and hierarchical influ- 
ence of Rome ! 

Heresy and schism, false philosophy, false 
science, and false art, cunning diplomacy, infidelity 
and atheism, one and all boldly raise up their 
heads and attack the Church in the face ; while 
secret societies of world-wide organization are 
stealthily engaged in undermining her strength 
with the people. Even the sick man, the Turk, 
who lives at the beck of the so-called Christian 
nations, has impudently kicked the Church of 
Christ, knowing full well there is no longer in 
Europe any power which will openly raise a voice 
in her defence. 

How many souls, on account of this dreadful 
war waged against the Church, are now suffering 
in secret a bitter agony! How many are hesitat- 
ing, knowing not what to do, and looking for guid- 
ance ! How many are wavering between hope and 
fear ! Alas ! too many have already lost the faith. 



The Chtcrch and the Age. 9 

Culpable is the silence and base the fear which 
would restrain one's voice at a period when God, 
the Church, and Religion are everywhere either 
openly denied, boldly attacked, or fiercely perse- 
cuted. In such trying times as these silence or 
fear is betrayal. 

The hand of God is certainly in these events, and 
it is no less certain that the light of divine faith 
ought to discern it. Through these clouds which 
now obscure the Church the light of divine hope 
ought to pierce, enabling us to perceive a better 
and a brighter future, for this is what is in store 
for the Church and the world. That love which 
embraces at once the greatest glory of God and the 
highest happiness of man should outweigh all fear 
of misinterpretations, and urge one to make God's 
hand clear to those who are willing to see, ^nd 
point out to them the way to that happier and 
fairer future. 

What, then, has brought about this most deplor- • 
able state of things? How can we account for 
this apparent lack of faith and strength on the 
part of Catholics? Can it be true, as their enemies 
assert, that Catholicity, wherever it has full sway, 
deteriorates society? Or is it contrary to the 
spirit of Christianity that Christians should strive 
with all their might to overcome evil in this world ? 
Perhaps the Catholic Church has grown old, 



io The Church and the Age. 



others imagine, and has accomplished her task, and 
is no longer competent to unite together the con- 
flicting interests of modern society and direct it 
towards its true destination? 

These questions are most serious ones. Their 
answers must be fraught with most weighty les- 
sons. Only a meagre outline of the course of argu- 
ment can be here given in so vast a field of inves- 
tigation. 



Remote Cause of Present Difficulties. 

One of the chief features of the history of the 
Church for these last three centuries has been its 
conflict with the religious revolution of the six- 
teenth century, properly called Protestantism. 
The nature of Protestantism may be defined as 
the exaggerated development of personal inde- 
* pendence, directed to the negation of the divine 
authority of the Church, and chiefly aiming at its 
overthrow in the person of its supreme representa- 
tive, the Pope. 

It is a fixed law, founded in the very nature of 
the Church, that every serious and persistent de- 
nial of a divinely revealed truth necessitates its 
vigorous defence, calls out its greater development, 
and ends, finally, in its dogmatic definition. 



The Church and the Age. 



The history of the Church is replete with in- 
stances of this fact. One must suffice. When 
Arius denied the divinity of Christ, which was al- 
ways held as a divinely revealed truth, at once the 
doctors of the Church and the faithful were aroused 
in its defence. A General Council was called at 
Nice, and there this truth was defined and fixed 
for ever as a dogma of the Catholic faith. The 
law has always been, from the first Council at Jeru- 
salem to that of the Vatican, that the negation of 
a revealed truth calls out its fuller development 
and its explicit dogmatic definition. 

The Council of Trent refuted and condemned 
the errors of Protestantism at the time of their 
birth, and defined the truths against which they 
were directed, but for wise and sufficient reasons 
did not fully develop the dogmatic teaching on 
the objective point of attack, which was, neces- 
sarily, the divine authority of the Church. For 
there was no standing ground whatever for a 
protest against the Church, except in its denial. 
It would have been the height of absurdity to 
admit an authority, and that divine, and at the 
same time to refuse to obey its decisions. It 
was as well known then as to-day that the 
keystone of the whole structure of the Church 
was its head. To overthrow the Papacy was to 
conquer the Church. 



12 The Church and the Age. 



The supreme power of the Church for a long 
period of years was the centre around which the 
battle raged between the adversaries and the cham- 
pions of the faith. 

The denial of the papal authority in the Church 
necessarily occasioned its fuller development. For 
as long as this hostile movement was aggressive in 
its assaults, so long was the Church constrained to 
strengthen her defence and make a stricter and 
more detailed application of her authority in every 
sphere of her action, in her hierarchy, in her gene- 
ral discipline, and in the personal acts of her chil- 
dren. Every new denial was met with a new de- 
fence and a fresh application. The danger was on 
the side of revolt, the safety was on that of sub- 
mission. The poison was an exaggerated spiritual 
independence, the antidote was increased obedience 
to a divine external authority. 

The chief occupation of the Church for the last 
three centuries was the maintenance of that au- 
thority conferred by Christ on St. Peter and his 
successors, in opposition to the efforts of Protes- 
tantism for its overthrow ; and the contest was ter- 
minated for ever in the dogmatic definition of 
papal infallibility, by the Church assembled in 
council in the Vatican. Luther declared the Pope 
Antichrist ; the Catholic Church affirmed the 
Pops to be the Vicar of Christ. Luther stigma- 



The Church and the Age. 13 



tized the see of Rome as the seat of error ; the 
Council of the Church defined the see of Rome, 
the chair of St. Peter, to be the infallible inter- 
preter of divinely revealed truth. This definition 
closed the controversy. 

In this pressing necessity of defending the papal 
authority of the Church the Society of St. Igna- 
tius was born. It was no longer the refutation of 
the errors of the Waldenses and Albigenses that 
was required, nor were the dangers to be combated 
such as arise from a wealthy and luxurious society. 
The former had been met and overcome by the 
Dominicans ; the latter by the children of St. 
Francis. But new and strange errors arose, and 
alarming threats from an entirely different quarter 
were heard. Fearful blows were aimed and struck 
against the keystone of the divine constitution of 
the Church, and millions of her children were in 
open revolt. In this great crisis, as in previous 
ones, Providence supplied new men and new wea- 
pons to meet the new perils. St. Ignatius, filled 
with faith and animated with heroic zeal, came to 
the rescue, and formed an army of men devoted to 
the service of the Church and specially suited to 
encounter its peculiar dangers. The Papacy was 
the point of attack : the members of his 'Society 
must be the champions of the Pope — his body- 
guard. The papal authority was denied : the chil- 



14 The Church and the Age. 



dren of St. Ignatius must make a special vow of 
obedience to the Holy Father. The prevailing sin 
of the time was disobedience : the members of his 
company must aim at becoming the perfect models 
of the virtue of obedience, men whose wills should 
never conflict with the authority of the Church, 
perinde cadaver. The distinguishing traits of a per- 
fect Jesuit formed the antithesis of a thorough 
Protestant. 

The Society founded by St. Ignatius undertook a 
heavy and an heroic task, one in its nature most 
unpopular, and requiring above all on the part of 
its members an entire abnegation of that which 
men hold dearest- — their own will. It is no won- 
der that their army of martyrs is so numerous and 
their list of saints so long. 

Inasmuch as the way of destroying a vice is to 
enforce the practice of its opposite virtue, and as 
the confessional and spiritual direction are appro- 
priate channels for applying the authority of the 
Church to the conscience and personal actions of 
the faithful, the members of this Society insisted 
upon the frequency of the one and the necessity of 
the other. In a short period of time the Jesuits 
were considered the most skilful and were the most 
sought-after confessors and spiritual directors in the 
Church. 

They were mainly instrumental, by the science of 



The Church and the Age. 15 



their theologians, the logic of their controver- 
sialists, the eloquence of their preachers, the ex- 
cellence of their spiritual writers, and, above all, 
by the influence of their personal example, in 
saving millions from following in the great revolt 
against the Church, in regaining millions who had 
gone astray, and in putting a stop to the numeri- 
cal increase of Protestantism, almost within the 
generation in which it was born. 
k To their labors and influence it is chiefly owing 
that the distinguishing mark of a sincere Catholic 
for the last three centuries has been a special de- 
votion to the Holy See, and a filial obedience to 
the voice of the Pope, the common Father of the 
faithful. 

The logical outcome of the existence of the So- 
ciety founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola was the 
dogmatic definition of Papal Infallibility ; for this 
was the final word of victory of Divine Truth over 
the specific error which the Jesuits were specially 
called to combat. 



Proximate Cause of Timidity. 

The Church, while resisting Protestantism, had 
to give her principal attention and apply her main 
strength to those points which were attacked. 
Like a wise strategist she drew off her forces from 



1 6 The Church and the Age. 



the places which were secure, and directed them to 
those posts where danger threatened. As she was 
most of all engaged in the defence of her external 
authority and organization, the faithful, in view r of 
this defence, as well as in regard to the dangers of 
the period, were specially guided to the practice of 
the virtue of obedience. Is it a matter of surprise 
that the character of the virtues developed was 
more passive than active? The weight of autho- 
rity was placed on the side of restraining rather 
than that of developing personal independent 
action. 

The exaggeration of personal authority on the 
part of Protestants brought about in the Church its 
greater restraint, in order that her divine authority 
might have its legitimate exercise and exert its 
salutary influence. The errors and evils of the 
times sprang from an unbridled personal indepen- 
dence, which could be only counteracted by habits 
of increased personal dependence. Contraria con- 
trariis curantur. The defence of the Church and 
the salvation of the soul were ordinarily secured at 
the expense, necessarily, of those virtues which 
properly go to make up the strength of Christian 
manhood./) 

The gain was the maintenance and victory of 
divine truth and the salvation of the soul. The 
loss was a certain falling-off in energy, resulting in 



The Church and the Age. 17 



decreased action in the natural order. The former 
was a permanent and inestimable gain. The latter 
was a temporary and not irreparable loss. There 
was no room for a choice. The faithful were 
placed in a position in which it became their un- 
qualified duty to put into practice the precept of 
our Lord when He said: "It is better for thee to 
enter into life maimed or lame, than, having two 
hands or two feet, to be cast into everlasting fire!' * 
(T In the principles above briefly stated may in a 
great measure be found the explanation why fifty 
millions of Protestants have had generally a con- 
trolling influence, for a long period, over two hun- 
dred millions of Catholics, in directing the move- 
ments and destinies of nations? \ To the same 
source may be attributed the fact that Catholic na- 
tions, when the need was felt of a man of great per- 
sonal energy at the head of their affairs, seldom 
hesitated to choose for prime minister an indiffe- 
rent Catholic or a Protestant, or even an infidel. 
These principles explain also why Austria, France, 
Bavaria, Spain, Italy, and other Catholic countries 
have yielded to a handful of active and determined 
radicals, infidels, Jews, or atheists, and have been 
compelled to violate or annul their concordats with 
the Holy See, and to change their political institu- 
tions in a direction hostile to the interests of the 

* St. Matthew xviii. 8. 



i8 



The Church and the Age, 



Catholic religion. Finally, herein lies the secret 
why Catholics are at this moment almost every- 
where oppressed and persecuted by very inferior 
numbers. In the natural order the feebler are al- 
ways made to serve the stronger. Evident weak- 
ness on one side, in spite of superiority of numbers, 
provokes on the other, where there is consciousness 
of power, subjugation and oppression. 



Is there a Way Out? 

Is divine grace given only at the cost of natural 
strength ? Is a true Christian life possible only 
through the sacrifice of a successful natural career ? 
Are things to remain as they are at present? 

The general history of the Catholic religion in 
the past condemns these suppositions as the gross- 
est errors and falsest calumnies. Behold the small 
numbers of the faithful and their final triumph over 
the great, colossal' Roman Empire ! Look at the 
subjugation of the countless and victorious hordes 
of the Northern barbarians ! Witness again the 
prowess of the Knights of the Church, who were 
her champions in repulsing the threatening Mussul- 
man ; every one of whom, by the rule of their or- 
der, was bound not to flinch before two Turks ! 



The Church and the Age. 19 

Call to mind the great discoveries made in all 
branches of science, and the eminence in art dis- 
played by the children of the Church, and which 
underlie, if there were only honesty enough to ac- 
knowledge it, most of our modern progress and civi- 
lization ! Long before Protestantism was dreamed 
of Catholic states in Italy had reached a degree of 
wealth and glory which no Protestant nation — it 
is the confession of one of their own historians — 
has since attained. 

There is, then, no reason in the nature of things 
why the existing condition of Catholics throughout 
the world should remain as it is. The blood that 
courses through our veins, the graces given in our 
baptism, the light of our faith, the divine life-giving 
bread we receive, are all the same gifts and privi- 
leges which we have in common with our great an- 
cestors. We are the children of the same mighty 
mother, ever fruitful of heroes and great men. The 
present state of things is neither fatal nor final, but 
only one of the many episodes in the grand history 
of the Church of God. 

No better evidence is needed of the truth of the 
statements just made than the fact that all Catho- 
lics throughout the world are ill at ease with things 
as they are. The world at large is agitated as it 
never has been before with problems which enter 
into the essence of religion or are closely connected 



20 The Church and the Age. 



therewith. Many serious minds are occupied with 
the question of the renewal of religion and the re- 
generation of society. The aspects in which ques- 
tions of this nature are viewed are as various as the 
remedies proposed are numerous. Here are a few 
of the more important ones. 

One class of men would begin by laboring for 
the reconciliation of all Christian denominations, 
and would endeavor to establish unity in Christen- 
dom as the way to universal restoration. Another 
class starts with the idea that the remedy would be 
found in giving a more thorough and religious 
education to youth in schools, colleges, and univer- 
sities. Some would renew the Church by translat- 
ing her liturgies into the vulgar tongues, by reduc- 
ing the number of her forms of devotion, and by 
giving to her worship greater simplicity. Others, 
again, propose to alter the constitution of the 
Church by the practice of universal elections in the 
hierarchy, by giving the lay element a larger share 
in the direction of ecclesiastical matters, and by 
establishing national churches. There are those 
who hoped for a better state of things by placing 
Henry V. on the throne of France, and Don Carlos 
on that of Spain. Others, contrariwise, having lost 
all confidence in princes, look forward with great 
expectations to a baptized democracy, a holy Ro- 
man democracy, just as formerly there was a holy 



The Church and the Age. 



21 



Roman Empire. Not a few are occupied with the 
idea of reconciling capital with labor, of changing 
the tenure of property, and abolishing standing 
armies. Others propose a restoration of interna- 
tional law, a congress of nations, and a renewed 
and more strict observance of the Decalogue. Ac- 
cording to another school, theological motives have 
lost their hold on the people, the task of directing 
society has devolved upon science, and its aposto- 
late has begun. There are those, moreover, who 
hold that society can only be cured by an immense 
catastrophe, and one hardly knows what great cata- 
clysm is to happen and save the human race. Fi- 
nally, we are told that the reign of Antichrist has 
begun, that signs of it are everywhere, and that we 
are on the eve of the end of the world. 

These are only a few of the projects, plans, and 
remedies which are discussed, and which more or 
less occupy and agitate the public mind. How 
much truth or error, how much good or bad, each 
or all of these theories contain, would require a 
lifetime to find out. 

But the remedy for our evils must be got at, to 
be practical, in another way. If a new life be im- 
parted to the root of a tree, its effects will soon 
be seen in all its branches, twigs, and leaves. Is 
it not possible to get at the root of all our evils, 
and with a radical remedy renew at once the whole 



22 The Church and the Age. 



face of things? Universal evils are not cured by 
specifics. 

All things are to be viewed and valued as they 
bear on the destiny of man. Religion is the solu- 
tion of the problem of man's destiny. Religion, 
therefore, lies at the root of everything which con- 
cerns man's true interest. 

Religion means Christianity, to all men, or to 
nearly all, who hold to any religion among Euro- 
pean nations. Christianity, intelligibly understood, 
signifies the Church, the Catholic Church. The 
Church is God acting through a visible organiza- 
tion directly on men, and, through men, on society. 

The Church is the sum of all problems, and the 
most potent fact in the whole wide universe. It is 
therefore illogical to look elsewhere for the radical 
remedy of all our evils. It is equally unworthy of 
a Catholic to look elsewhere for the renewal of re- 
ligion. 

The meditation of the great truths of Chris- 
tian faith is the source from which the inspiration 
must come, if society is to be regenerated and 
the human race directed to its true destination. 
He who looks to any other quarter for a radical 
and adequate remedy, and for true guidance, is 
doomed to failure and disappointment. 



The Church and the Age. 23 



Mission of the Holy Spirit. 

It cannot be too deeply and firmly impressed on 
the mind that the Church is actuated by the in- 
stinct of the Holy Spirit, and to discern clearly its 
action, and to co-operate with it effectually, is the 
highest employment of our faculties, and at the 
same time the primary source of the greatest good 
to society. 

Did we clearly see and understand the divine 
action of the Holy Spirit in the successive steps of 
the history of the Church, we should fully compre- 
hend the law of all true progress. If in this latter 
period more stress was laid on the necessity of 
obedience to the external authority of the Church 
than in former days, it was, as has been shown, 
owing to the peculiar dangers to which the faithful 
were exposed. It would be an inexcusable mistake 
to suppose for a moment that the Holy Church, at 
any period of her existence, was ignorant or forget- 
ful of the mission and office of the Holy Spirit. 
The Holy Spirit established the Church, and can 
He forget His own mission ? It is true that He 
has to guide and govern through men, but He is 
the sovereign of men, and especially of those whom 
He has chosen as His immediate instruments. 

The essential and universal principle which saves 
and sanctifies souls is the Holy Spirit. He it was 



24 The Church and the Age. 



who called, inspired, and sanctified the patriarchs, 
the prophets, and saints of the old dispensation. 
The same Divine Spirit inspired and sanctified the 
apostles, the martyrs, and the saints of the new 
dispensation. The actual and habitual guidance of 
the soul by the Holy Spirit is the essential prin- 
ciple of all divine life. " I have taught the pro- 
phets from the beginning, and even till now I cease 
not to speak to all." * Christ's mission was to give 
the Holy Spirit more abundantly. 

No one who reads the Holy Scriptures can fail 
to be struck with the repeated injunctions to turn 
our eyes inward, to walk in the divine presence, to 
see and taste and listen to God in the soul. These 
exhortations run all through the inspired books, 
beginning with that of Genesis and ending with 
the Revelation of St. John. " I am the Almighty 
God : walk before me, and be perfect," f was the 
lesson which God gave to the patriarch Abraham. 
" Be still and see that I am God."^ "O taste and 
see that the Lord is sweet : blessed is the man that 
hopeth in Him." § God is the guide, the light of 
the living, and our strength. u God's kingdom is 
within you," said the Divine Master. " Know you 
not that you are the temple of God, and that the 
Spirit of God dwelleth in you ? " || " For it is God 

* Thomas a Kempis, book iii. 3. f Genesis xviii. 1. 

X Psa 1 !!! xlv. 11. § Psalm xxxiii. 9. \ 1 Corinlh. iii. 16. 



The Church and the Age. 25 



who worketh in you both to will and to accomplish, 
according to His will."* The object of divine re- 
velation was to make known and to establish with- 
in the souls of men, and through them upon the 
earth, the kingdom of God. 

In accordance with the Sacred Scriptures, the 
Catholic Church teaches that the Holy Spirit is 
infused, with all His gifts, into our souls by the 
sacrament of baptism, and that without His actual 
prompting or inspiration, and aid, no thought or 
act or even wish, tending directly towards our true 
destiny, is possible. 

The whole aim of the science of Christian perfec- 
tion is to instruct men how to remove the hin- 
drances in the way of the action of the Holy 
Spirit, and how to cultivate those virtues which are 
most favorable to His solicitations and inspirations. 
Thus the sum of spiritual life consists in observing 
and yielding to the movements of the Spirit 
of God in our soul, employing for this purpose 
all the exercises of prayer, spiritual reading, sacra- 
ments, the practice of virtues, and good works. 

That divine action which is the immediate and 
principal cause of the salvation and perfection of 
the soul claims by right its direct and main atten- 
tion. From this source within the soul there will 
gradually come to birth the consciousness of the 
* Philip, ii. 13. 



26 



The Church and the Age. 



indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, out of 
which will spring a force surpassing all human 
strength, a courage higher than all human heroism, 
a sense of dignity excelling all human greatness. 
The light the age requires for its renewal can come 
only from the same source. The renewal of the 
age depends on the renewal of religion. The re- 
newal of religion depends upon a greater effusion 
of the creative and renewing power of the Holy 
Spirit. The greater effusion of the Holy Spirit de- 
pends on the giving of increased attention to His 
movements and inspirations in the soul. The radi- 
cal and adequate remedy for all the evils of our 
age, and the source of all true progress, consist in 
increased attention and fidelity to the action of the 
Holy Spirit in the soul. "Thou shalt send forth 
Thy spirit, and they shall be created : and Thou 
shalt renew the face of the earth." * 



The Men the Age Demands. 

This truth will be better seen by looking at the 
matter a little more in detail. The age, we are 
told, calls for men worthy of that name. Who are 
those worthy to be called men ? Men, assuredly, 
whose intelligences and wills are divinely illuminated 
* Psalm ciii. 30. 



The Church and the Age. 27 



and fortified. This is precisely what is produced 
by the gifts of the Holy Spirit ; they enlarge all 
the faculties of the soul at once. 

The age is superficial ; it needs the gift of Wis- 
dom, which enables the soul to contemplate truth 
in its ultimate causes. The age is materialistic ; it 
needs the gift of Intelligence, by the light of which 
the intellect penetrates into the essence of things. 
The age is captivated by a false and one-sided 
science ; it needs the gift of Science, by the light 
of which is seen each order of truth in its true re- 
lations to other orders and in a divine unity. The 
age is in disorder, and is ignorant of the way to 
true progress ; it needs the gift of Counsel, which 
teaches how to choose the proper means to attain 
an object. The age is impious ; it needs the gift of 
Piety, which leads the soul to look up to God as 
the Heavenly Father, and to adore Him with feel- 
ings of filial affection and love. The age is sensual 
and effeminate ; it needs the gift of Fortitude, 
which imparts to the will the strength to endure 
the greatest burdens, and to prosecute the greatest 
enterprises with ease and heroism. The age has 
lost and almost forgotten God ; it needs the gift of 
Fear, to bring the soul again to God, and make it 
feel conscious of its responsibility and of its des- 
tiny. 

Men endowed with these gifts are the men for 



28 The Church and the Age. 



whom, if it but knew it, the age calls. Men whose 
minds are enlightened and whose wills are strength- 
ened by an increased action of the Holy Spirit. 
Men whose souls are actuated by the gifts of the 
Holy Spirit. Men whose countenances are lit up 
with a heavenly joy, who breathe an air of inward 
peace, and act with a holy liberty and a resistless 
energy. One such soul does more to advance 
the kingdom of God than tens of thousands without 
those gifts. These are the men and this is the way, 
if the age could only be made to see and believe 
it, to universal restoration, universal reconciliation, 
and universal progress, as far as such boons are 
attainable. 



The Church has Entered on this Way. 

The men the age and its needs demand depend 
on a greater infusion of the Holy Spirit into 
the soul; and the Church has been already pre- 
pared for this event. 

Can one suppose for a moment that so long, so 
severe a contest as that of the three centuries just 
passed, which, moreover, has cost so dearly, has 
not been fraught with the greatest utility to the 
Church ^ Does God ever allow His Church to 



The Church and the Age. 29 



suffer loss in the struggle to accomplish her divine 
mission ? 

It is true that the powerful and persistent as- 
saults of the errors, of the sixteenth century against 
the Church forced her, so to speak, out of the usual 
orbit of her movement ; but having completed her 
defence from all danger on that side, she is return- 
ing to her normal course, with increased agencies, 
thanks to that contest, and is entering upon a new 
and fresh phase of life, and upon a more vigorous 
action in every sphere of her existence. The chief- 
est of these agencies, and the highest in import- 
ance, was that of the definition concerning the 
nature of papal authority. For the definition of 
the Vatican Council, having rendered the supreme 
authority of the Church, which is the unerring in- 
terpreter and criterion of divinely revealed truth, 
more explicit and complete, has prepared the way 
for the faithful to follow, with greater safety and 
liberty, the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. « The 
dogmatic papal definition of the Vatican Council 
is therefore the axis on which turn the new course 
of the Church, the renewal of religion, and the 
entire restoration of society. 

O blessed fruit, purchased at the price of so hard 
a struggle, but which has gained for the faithful 
an increased divine illumination and force, and 
thereby the renewal of the whole face of the world ! 



30 The Church and the Age. 

It is easy to perceive how great a blunder the so- 
called " Old Catholics " committed in opposing the 
conciliar definition. They professed a desire to see 
a more perfect reign of the Holy Spirit in the 
Church, and by their opposition rejected, so far as 
in them lay, the very means of bringing it about ! 

This by the way; let us continue our course, and 
follow the divine action in the Church, which is the 
initiator and fountain-source of the restoration of 
all things. 

What is the meaning of these many pilgrimages 
to holy places, to the shrines of great saints, the 
multiplication of novenas and new associations of 
prayer? Are they not evidence of increased action 
of the Holy Spirit in the faithful? Why, more- 
over, those cruel persecutions, vexatious fines, and 
numerous imprisonments borne until recently by 
the bishops, clergy, and laity of the Church ? 
What is the secret of this stripping the Church of 
her temporal possessions and authority ? These 
things have taken place by the divine permission. 
Have not all these inflictions increased greatly 
devotion to prayer, cemented more closely the 
unity of the faithful, and turned the attention of 
all members of the Church, from the highest to 
the lowest, to look for aid from whence it alone 
can come — from God? 

These trials and sufferings of the faithful are the 



The Church and the Age. 31 



first steps towards a better state of things. They 
detach from earthly things and purify the human 
side of the Church. From them will proceed light, 
and strength, and victory. Per crucem ad lucem. 
" If the Lord wishes that other persecutions should 
be suffered, the Church feels no alarm ; on the con- 
trary, persecutions purify her and confer upon her 
a fresh force and a new beauty. There are, in 
truth, in the Church certain things which need puri- 
fication, and for this purpose those persecutions 
answer best which are launched against her by 
great politicians. " Such is the language of Pius 
IX* 

These are only some of the movements, which 
are public. But how many souls in secret suffer 
sorely in seeing the Church in such tribulations, 
and pray for her deliverance with a fervor almost 
amounting to agony ! Are not all these but so 
many preparatory steps to a Pentecostal effusion of 
the Holy Spirit on the Church, an effusion, if not 
equal in intensity to that of apostolic days, at least 
greater than it in universality? "If at no epoch 
of the Evangelical ages the reign of Satan was so 
generally welcome as in this our day, the action of 
the Holy Spirit will have to clothe itself with the 

* January 15, 1872. This and the subsequent quotations of 
the words of Pius IX. are taken from Actes et Paroles de Pie 
tX., par Auguste RousseL Paris, Palme, 1874. 



32 



The Church and the Age. 



characteristics of an exceptional extension and 
force. The axioms of geometry do not appear to 
us more rigorously exact than this proposition. A 
certain indefinable presentiment of this necessity 
of a new effusion of the Holy Spirit for the actual 
world exists, and of this presentiment the import- 
ance ought not to be exaggerated ; but yet it would 
seem rash to make it of no account." * 

Is not this the meaning of the presentiment of 
Pius IX. when he said : " Since we have nothing, 
or next to nothing, to expect from men, let us place 
our confidence more and more in God, whose heart 
is preparing, as it seems to me, to accomplish, in 
the moment chosen by Himself, a great prodigy 
which will fill the whole earth with astonish- 
ment. " f 

Was not the same presentiment before the mind 
of De Maistre when he penned the following lines : 
" We are on the eve of the greatest of religious 
epochs .... It appears to me that every true 
philosopher must choose between these two hypo- 
theses, either that a new religion is about to be 
formed, or that Christianity will be renewed in 
some extraordinary manner." % 

* Traite du St. Esprit, par Mgr. Gaume, 1864. 
f January 22, 1871. 

% De Maistre, Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg, X e Soiree. 



The Church and the Age. 33 



Twofold Action of the Holy Spirit. 

Before further investigation of this new phase of 
the Church, it would perhaps be well to set aside a 
doubt which might arise in the minds of some — 
namely, whether there is not danger in turning the 
attention of the faithful in a greater degree to the 
interior life and in the direction contemplated? 

The enlargement of the field of action for the 
soul, without a true knowledge of the end and 
scope of the external authority of the Church, 
would only open the door to delusions, errors, and 
heresies of every description, and would be in effect 
merely another form of Protestantism. 

But, on the other hand, the exclusive view of the 
external authority of the Church, without a proper 
understanding of the nature and work of the Holy 
Spirit in the soul, would render the practice of 
religion formal, obedience servile, and the Church 
sterile. 

The solution of the difficulty is as follows : The 
action of the Holy Spirit embodied visibly in the 
authority of the Church, and the action of the 
Holy Spirit dwelling invisibly in the soul, form one 
inseparable synthesis ; and he who has not a clear 
conception of this twofold action of the Holy 
Spirit is in danger of running into one or the 
other, and sometimes into both, of these extremes, 



34 



The Church and the Age. 



either of which is destructive of the end of the 
Church. 

The Holy Spirit, in the external authority of the 
Church, acts as the infallible interpreter and crite- 
rion of divine revelation. The Holy Spirit in the 
soul acts as the Divine Life-giver and Sanctifier. 
It is of the highest importance that these two dis- 
tinct offices of the Holy Spirit should not be con- 
founded. 

The supposition that there can be any opposi- 
tion or contradiction between the action of the 
Holy Spirit in the supreme decisions of the author- 
ity of the Church, and the inspirations of the Holy 
Spirit in the soul, can never enter the mind of 
an enlightened and sincere Christian. The Holy 
Spirit, which, through the authority of the Church, 
teaches divine truth, is the same Spirit which 
prompts the soul to receive the divine truths which 
He teaches. The measure of our love for the Holy 
Spirit is the measure of our obedience to the au- 
thority of the Church ; and the measure of our 
obedience to the authority of the Church is the 
measure of our love for the Holy Spirit. Hence 
the sentence of St. Augustine : " Quantum quisquc 
amat Ecclcsiam Dei, tantum habet Spirit um Sanc- 
tum" There is one Spirit, which acts in two dif- 
ferent offices concurring to the same end, the re> 
generation and sanctification of the soul. 



The Church and the Age. 35 



In case of obscurity or doubt concerning what 
is the divinely revealed truth, or whether what 
prompts the soul is or is not an inspiration of the 
Holy Spirit, recourse must be had to the divine 
teacher or criterion, the authority of the Church. 
For it must be borne in mind that to the Church, 
as represented in the first instance by St. Peter, 
and subsequently by his successors, was made the 
promise of her Divine Founder that " the gates of 
hell should never prevail against her." * No such 
promise was ever made by Christ to each individual 
believer. " The Church of the living God is the 
pillar and ground of Truth." f The test, therefore, 
of a truly enlightened and sincere Christian will be, 
in case of uncertainty, the promptitude of his obe- 
dience to the voice of the Church. 

From the above plain truths the following prac- 
tical rule of conduct may be drawn. The Holy 
Spirit is the immediate guide of the soul in the way 
of salvation and sanctification ; and the criterion, or 
test, that the soul is guided by the Holy Spirit, is 
its ready obedience to the authority of the Church. 
This rule removes all danger whatever, and with it 
the soul can walk, run, or fly, if it chooses, in the 
greatest safety and with perfect liberty, in the ways 
of sanctity. 



* St. Matth. xvi. 18. 



\ 1 Timothy iii. 15. 



36 The Church and the Age. 



New Phase of the Church. 

There are signs which indicate that the members 
of the Church have not only entered upon a deeper 
and more spiritual life, but that from the same 
source has arisen a new phase of their intellectual 
activity. 

The notes of the divine institution of the Church, 
and the credibility of divine revelation, with her 
constitution and organization, having been in the 
main completed on the external side, the notes 
which now require special attention and study are 
those respecting her divine character, which lie on 
the internal side. 

The mind of the Church has been turned in this 
direction for some time past. One has but to read 
the several encyclical letters of the present reign- 
ing Supreme Pontiff and of his predecessor, and the 
decrees of the Vatican Council, to be fully con- 
vinced of this fact. 

( No Pontiffs have so strenuously upheld the value 
and rights of human reason as Pius IX. and Leo 
XIII.; and no council has treated so fully of the 
relations of the natural with the supernatural as 
that of the Vatican. It must be remembered this 
work of both the Papacy and the Council is not 
yet concluded. Great mission that, to fix for ever 
those truths so long held in dispute, and to open 



The Church and the Age. 37 



the door to the fuller knowledge of other and still 
greater verities !) 

It is the divine action of the Holy Spirit in and 
through the Church which gives her external or- 
ganization the reason for its existence. And it is 
the fuller explanation of the divine side of the 
Church and its relations with her human side, giv- 
ing always to the former its due accentuation, that 
will contribute to the increase of the interior life 
of the faithful, and aid powerfully to remove the 
blindness of those, whose number is much larger 
than is commonly supposed, who only see the 
Church on her human side. 

The following mere suggestions, concerning the 
relations of the internal with the external side of 
the Church, are here given. 

The practical aim of all true religion is to bring 
each individual soul under the immediate guidance 
of the Divine Spirit. The Divine Spirit communi- 
cates Himself to the soul by means of the sacra- 
ments of the Church. The Divine Spirit acts as 
the interpreter and criterion of revealed truth by 
the authority of the Church. The Divine Spirit 
acts as the principle of regeneration and sanctifi- 
cation in each Christian soul. The same Spirit 
clothes with suitable ceremonies and words the 
truths of religion, and the interior life of the soul, 
in the liturgy and devotions of the Church. The 



38 



The Church and the Age. 



Divine Spirit acts as the safeguard of the life of 
the soul and of the household of God in the dis- 
cipline of the Church. The Divine Spirit estab- 
lished the Church as the practical and perfect 
means of bringing all souls under His own imme- 
diate guidance and into complete union with God. 
This is the realization of the aim of all true re- 
ligion. Thus all religions, as far as they contain 
truth and viewed in the aspect of a divine life, find 
their common centre in the Catholic Church. 

The greater part of the intellectual errors of the 
age arise from a lack of knowledge of the essential 
relations of the light of faith with the light of rea- 
son ; of the connection between the mysteries and 
truths of divine revelation and those discovered and 
attainable by human reason ; of the action of divine 
grace and the action of the human will. 

The early Greek and Latin Fathers of the Church 
largely cultivated this field. The scholastics greatly 
increased the riches received from their predeces- 
sors. And had not the attention of the Church 
been turned aside from its course by the errors of 
the sixteenth century, the demonstration of Chris- 
tianity on its intrinsic side would ere this have re- 
ceived its finishing strokes. The time has come to 
take up this work, continue it where it was inter- 
rupted, and bring it to completion. Thanks to the 
encyclicals of Pius IX. and the decisions of the 



The Church and the Age. 39 



Vatican Council, and the encyclicals of Leo XIII. , 
this task will not now be so difficult. 

Many, if not most, of the distinguished apolo- 
gists of Christianity, theologians, philosophers, and 
preachers, either by their writings or eloquence, 
have already entered upon this path. The recently 
published volumes, and those issuing day by day 
from the press, in" exposition, or defence, or apology 
of Christianity, are engaged in this work. 

The explanation of the internal life and constitu- 
tion of the Church, and of the intelligible side of 
the mysteries of faith and the intrinsic reasons for 
the truths of divine revelation, giving to them their 
due emphasis, combined with the external notes of 
credibility, would complete the demonstration of 
Christianity. Such an exposition of Christianity, 
the union of the internal with the external notes of 
credibility, is calculated to produce a more enlight- 
ened and intense conviction of its divine truth in 
the faithful, to stimulate them to a more energetic 
personal action ; and, what is more, it would open 
the door to many straying but not altogether lost 
children for their return to the fold of the Church. 

The increased action of the Holy Spirit, with a 
more vigorous co-operation on the part of the faith- 
ful, which is in process of realization, will elevate 
the human personality to an intensity of force and 
grandeur productive of a new era to the Church 



40 The Church and the Age. 



and to society — an era difficult for the imagination 
to grasp, and still more difficult to describe in 
words, unless we have recourse to the prophetic 
language of the inspired Scriptures. 

Is not such a demonstration of Christianity and 
its results anticipated in the following words ? 

"We are about to see," said Schlegel, "a new 
exposition of Christianity, which will reunite all 
Christians and even bring back the infidels them- 
selves." " This reunion between science and 
faith," says the Protestant historian Ranke, " will 
be more important in its spiritual results than was 
the discovery of a new hemisphere three hundred 
years ago, or even than that of the true system of 
the universe, or than any other discovery of any 
kind whatever/' 



Mission of Races. 

Pursuing our study of the action of the Holy 
Spirit, we shall perceive that a deeper and more ex- 
plicit exposition of the divine side of the Church, 
in view of the characteristic gifts of different races, 
is the way or means of realizing the hopes above 
expressed. 

/ God is the author of the differing races of men. 
He, for His own good reasons, has stamped upon 



The Church and the Age. 41 



them their characteristics, and appointed them from 
the beginning their places which they are to fill in 
His Church. 

In a matter where there are so many tender sus- 
ceptibilities, it is highly important not to overrate 
the peculiar gifts of any race, nor, on the other 
hand, to underrate them or exaggerate their vices 
or defects. Besides, the different races in modern 
Europe have been brought so closely together, and 
have been mingled to such an extent, that their dif- 
ferences can only be detected in certain broad and 
leading features. 

It would be also a grave mistake, in speaking of 
the providential mission of the races, to suppose 
that they imposed their characteristics on religion, 
Christianity, or the Church ; whereas, on the con- 
trary, it is their Author who has employed in the 
Church their several gifts for the expression and de- 
velopment of those truths for which He specially 
created them. The Church is God acting through 
the different races of men for their highest develop- 
ment, together with their present and future great- 
est happiness and His own greatest glory. " God 
directs the nations upon the earth."* 

Every leading race of men, or great nation, fills a 
large space in the general history of the world. It 
is an observation of St. Augustine that God gave 
* Psalm lxvi. 5. 



42 The Church and the Age. 

the empire of the world to the Romans as a reward 
for their civic virtues. But it is a matter of surprise 
how large and important a part Divine Providence 
has appointed special races to take in the history of 
religion. It is here sufficient merely to mention the 
Israelites. 

One cannot help being struck with the mission of 
the Latin and Celtic races during the greater period 
of the history of Christianity. What brought them 
together in the first instance was the transference of 
the chair of St. Peter, the centre of the Church, to 
Rome, the centre of the Latin race. Rome then 
was the embodied expression of a perfectly organ- 
ized, world-wide power. Rome was the political, 
and by its great roads the geographical, centre of 
the world. 

What greatly contributed to the predominance of 
the Latin race, and subsequently of the Celts in 
union with the Latins, was the abandonment of the 
Church by the Greeks by schism, and tne loss of the 
larger portion of the Saxons by the errors and re- 
volt of the sixteenth century. The faithful in 
consequence were almost exclusively composed of 
Latin-Celtsj) 

The absence of the Greeks and of so large a por- 
tion of the Saxons, whose tendencies and preju- 
dices in many points are similar, left a freer course 
and an easier task to the Church, through her ordi- 



The Church and the Age. 43 



nary channels of action, as well as through her 
extraordinary ones, the Councils, namely, of Trent 
and the Vatican, to complete her authority and her 
external constitution. For the Latin-Celtic races 
are characterized by hierarchical, traditional, and 
emotional tendencies. 

These were the human elements which furnished 
the Church with the means of developing and com- 
pleting her supreme authority, her divine and eccle- 
siastical traditions, her discipline, her devotions, 
and her aesthetics. 



Some of the Causes of Protestantism. 

Clt was precisely the importance given to the 
external constitution and to the accessories of the 
Church which excited those antipathies of the 
Saxons which culminated in the so-called Re- 
formation. For the Saxon races and the mixed 
Saxons, the English and their descendants, pre- 
dominate in the rational element, in an energetic 
individuality, and in great practical activity in the 
material order.) 

One of the chief defects of the Saxon mind lay 
in not fully understanding the constitution of the 
Church, or sufficiently appreciating the essential 
necessity of her external organization. Hence 
their misinterpretation of the providential action 



44 



The Church and the Age. 



of the Latin-Celts, and their charges against the 
Church of formalism, superstition, and popery. 
They wrongfully identified the excesses of those 
races with the Church of God. They failed to take 
into sufficient consideration the great and constant 
efforts the church had made, in her national and 
general councils, to correct the abuses and extir- 
pate the vices which formed the staple of their 
complaints. 

Conscious, also, of a certain feeling of repression 
of their natural instincts while this work of the 
Latin-Celts was being perfected, they at the same 
time felt a great aversion to the increase of ex- 
ternals in outward worship, " and to the minute 
regulations in discipline, as well as to the growth 
of papal authority and the outward grandeur of 
the papal court. The Saxon leaders in the heresy 
of the sixteenth century, as well as those who fol- 
lowed them, even down to our own day, cunningly 
taking advantage of those antipathies and of the 
selfish political considerations of princes, succeeded 
in making a large number believe that the ques- 
tion in controversy was not what it really was, a 
question, namely, between Christianity and infi- 
delity, but a question between Romanism and Ger- 
manism ! 

It is easy to foresee the result of such a false 
issue ; for it is impossible, humanly speaking, tha' f 



The Church and the Age. 45 



a religion can maintain itself among a people when 
once they are led to believe it wrongs their natural 
instincts, is hostile to their national development, 
or is unsympathetic with their genius. 

With misunderstandings, weaknesses, and jeal- 
ousies on both sides, these, with various other 
causes, led thousands and millions of Saxons and 
Anglo-Saxons to resistance, hatred, and finally 
open revolt against the authority of the Church. 



Recent Saxon Persecutions. 

The same causes which mainly produced the re- 
ligious rebellion of the sixteenth century are still 
at work among the Saxons, and were the excit- 
ing motives of their recent persecutions of the 
Church. 

Looking through the distorted medium of their 
Saxon prejudices, grown stronger with time, and 
freshly stimulated by the definition of papal in- 
fallibility, they have worked themselves into the 
belief, seeing the Church only on the outside as 
they do, that she is purely a human institution, 
grown slowly through centuries, by the controlling 
action of the Latin-Celtic instincts, to her present 
formidable proportions. The doctrines, the sacra- 
ments, the devotions, the worship, of the Catholic 



46 The Church and the Age. 



Church are for the most part, from their stand- 
point, corruptions of Christianity, having their 
source in the characteristics of the Latin-Celtic 
races. The papal authority, to their sight, is 
nothing else than the concentration of the sacer- 
dotal tendencies of these races, carried to their 
culminating point by the recent Vatican definition, 
which was due, in the main, to the efforts and the 
influence exerted by the Jesuits. This despotic 
ecclesiastical authority, which commands a super- 
stitious reverence and servile submission to all its 
decrees, teaches, they affirm, doctrines inimical to 
the autonomy of the German Empire, and has four- 
teen millions or more of its subjects under its sway, 
ready at any moment to obey, at all hazards, its 
decisions. What is to hinder this ultramontane 
power from issuing a decree, in a critical moment, 
which will disturb the peace and involve, perhaps, 
the overthrow of that empire, the fruit of so great 
sacrifices and the realization of the ardent aspira- 
tions of the Germanic races ? Is it not a dictate 
of self-preservation and political prudence to re- 
move so dangerous an element, and that at all 
costs, from the state ? Is it not a duty to free so 
many millions of our German brethren from this 
superstitious yoke and slavish subjection ? Has not 
Divine Providence bestowed the empire of Europe 
upon the Saxons and placed us Prussians at its head 



The Church and the Age. 47 



in order to accomplish, with all the means at our 
disposal, this great work ? Is not this a duty 
which we owe to ourselves, to our brother Ger- 
mans, and, above all, to God? This supreme effort 
is our divine mission ! 

This picture of the Catholic Church, as it appears 
to a large class of non-Catholic German minds, is 
not overdrawn. In fact, a higher coloring would 
give even a more exact picture of the delusion of 
the average German mind. 

This is the monster which the too excited ima- 
gination and the deeply-rooted prejudice of the 
Saxon mind have created, and called by way of con- 
tempt the " Latin/' the " Romish," the " Popish " 
Church. It is against this monster that they di- 
rected their persistent attacks, their cruel persecu- 
tions, animated with the fixed purpose of accom- 
plishing its entire overthrow. 

Is this a thing to be marvelled at, when Catho- 
lics themselves abhor and detest this caricature of 
the Catholic Church — for it is nothing else — more 
than these men do or possibly can do ? 

The attitude of the German Empire, and of the 
British Empire also until the Emancipation Act, 
vis-a-vis to the Catholic Church as they conceive 
her to be, may, stripped of accidental matter, be 
stated thus : Either adapt Latin Christianity, the 
Romish Church, to the German type of character 



48 The Church and the Age. 



and to the exigencies of the empire, or we will 
employ all the forces and all the means at our 
disposal to stamp out Catholicity within our do- 
minions, and to exterminate it as far as our au- 
thority and influence extend ! 



Return of the Saxon Races to the 
Church. 

The German mind, when once it is bent upon 
a course, is not easily turned aside, and the pre- 
sent outlook for the Church in Germany is not, 
humanly speaking, a pleasant one to contemplate. 
It is an old and common saying that " Truth is 
mighty and will prevail. " But why? " Truth is 
mighty " because it is calculated to convince the 
mind, captivate the soul, and elicit its uttermost 
activity and devotion. " Truth will prevail," pro- 
vided it is so presented to the mind as to be seen 
really as it is. It is only when the truth is un- 
known or disfigured that the sincere repel it. 

The return, therefore, of the Saxon races to the 
Church is to be hoped for, not by trimming di- 
vine truth, nor by altering the constitution of the 
Church, nor by what are called concessions. Their 
return is to be hoped for by so presenting the divine 



The Church and the Age. 49 



truth to their minds that they can see that it is 
divine truth. This will open their way to the 
Church in harmony with their genuine instincts, 
and in her bosom they will find the realization of 
that career which their true aspirations point out 
for them. For the Holy Spirit, of which the 
Church is the organ and expression, places every 
soul, and therefore all nations and races, in the 
immediate and perfect relation with their supreme 
end, God, in whom they obtain their highest de- 
velopment, happiness, and glory, both in this life 
and in the life to come. 

The Church, as has been shown, has already 
entered on this path of presenting more intimate- 
ly and clearly her inward and divine side to the 
world, for her deepest and most active thinkers 
are actually engaged, more or less consciously, in 
this providential w r ork. 

In showing more fully the relations of the in- 
ternal with the external side of the Church, keep- 
ing in view the internal as the end and aim of all, 
the mystic tendencies of the German mind w r ill 
enable it to truly appreciate the interior life of 
the Church and find in it their higher satisfaction. 
By penetrating more deeply into the intelligible 
side of the mysteries of faith and the intrinsic 
reasons for revealed truth and the existence of 
the Church, the strong rational tendencies of the 



50 The Church and the Age. 



Saxon mind will seize hold of and be led to ap- 
prehend the intrinsic reasons for Christianity. The 
Church will present herself to their minds as the 
practical means of establishing the complete reign 
of the Holy Spirit in the soul, and consequently 
of bringing the kingdom of heaven upon earth. 
This is the ideal conception of Christianity, en- 
tertained by all sincere believers in Christ among 
non-Catholics in Europe and the United States. 
This exposition, and an increased action of the 
Holy Spirit in the Church co-operating therewith, 
would complete their conviction of the divine 
character of the Church. 

All this may seem highly speculative and of 
no practical bearing. But it has precisely such a 
bearing, if one considers in connection with it what 
has been going on throughout the German Empire 
and other parts of Germany, including Switzer- 
land. What have we seen in all these regions? 
A simultaneous and persistent determination to 
destroy, by every species of persecution, the Ca- 
tholic Church. Now, the general law of persecu- 
tion is the conversion of the persecutors. 

Through the cross Christ began the redemption 
of the world ; through the cross the redemption 
of the world is to be continued and completed. 
It was mainly by the shedding of the blood of 
the martyrs that the Roman Empire was gained 



The Church and the Age. 51 



to the faith. Their conquerors were won by the 
toil, heroic labors, and sufferings of saintly mis- 
sionaries. The same law holds good in regard to 
modern persecutors. The question is not, How 
shall the German Empire be overthrown ? or of 
waiting in anticipation of its destruction ; or How 
shall the Church withstand its alarming persecu- 
tions ? The great question is, How shall the 
blindness be removed from the eyes of the per- 
secutors of the Church, and how can they be led 
to see her divine beauty, holiness, and truth, 
which at present are hidden from their sight ? 
The practical question is, How shall the Church 
gain over the great German Empire to the cause 
of Christ ? 

O blessed persecutions ! if, in addition to the 
divine virtues which they have brought to light 
by the suffering of the faithful, they serve also 
to lead the champions of the faith to seek for 
and employ such proofs and arguments as the 
Saxon mind cannot withstand, producing convic- 
tion in their intelligence and striking home the 
truth to their hearts ; and in this way, instead of 
incurring defeat, they will pluck out of the threat- 
ening jaws of this raging German wolf the sweet 
fruit of victory. 

This view is eminently practical, when you con- 
sider that the same law which applies to the per- 



52 The Church and the Age. 



secutors of the Church applies equally to the lead- 
ing or governing races. This is true from the be- 
ginning of the Church. The great apostles, St. 
Peter and St. Paul, did not stop in Jerusalem, but 
turned their eyes and steps towards all-conquer- 
ing, all-powerful Rome. Their faith and their he- 
roism, sealed with their martyrdom, after a long 
and bloody contest, obtained the victory. The im- 
perial Roman eagles became proud to carry aloft 
the victorious cross of Christ ! The Goths, the 
Huns, and Vandals came ; the conquest was re- 
peated ; the victory, too ; and they were subdued 
to the sweet yoke of Christ and incorporated in 
the bosom of His Church. 

Is this rise of the Germanic empire, in our day, to 
be considered only as a passing occurrence, and are 
we to suppose that things will soon again take their 
former course ? Or is it to be thought of as a real 
change in the direction of the world's affairs, under 
the lead of the dominant Saxon races? If the his- 
tory of the human race from its cradle can be taken 
as a rule, the course of empire is ever northward. 
Be that as it may, the Saxons have actually in 
their hands, and are resolutely determined to keep, 
the ruling power in Europe, if not in the world. 
And the Church is a divine queen, and her aim 
has always been to win to her bosom the im- 
perial rices. She has never failed to do it, too ! 



The Church and the Age. 53 



Think you these people are for the most part 
actuated by mere malice, and have persecuted the 
Church with knowledge of what they are doing? 
The question is not of their prominent leaders and 
the actual apostates. There may be future pro- 
digal sons even amongst these. Does not the 
Church suffer from their hands in a great mea- 
sure what her Divine Founder suffered when 
He was nailed to the cross, and cried, " Father, 
forgive them ; they know not what they do." 

The persecutors in the present generation are 
not to be judged as those who were born in the 
Church, and who, knowing her divine* character, 
by an unaccountable defection turned their backs 
upon her. Will their stumbling prove a fatal 
fall to all their descendants? God forbid! Their 
loss for a time has proved a gain to the Church, 
and their return will bring spiritual riches to both, 
and through them to the whole world, " for God 
is able to engraft them again." * 

The Catholic Church unveils to the penetrating 
intelligence of the Saxon races her divine inter- 
nal life and beauty ; to their energetic individual- 
ity she proposes its elevation to a divine man- 
hood ; and to their great practical activity she 
opens the door to its employment in spreading 
the divine faith over the whole world ! 

* St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, xi. 23. 



54 The Church and the Age. 



That which will hasten greatly the return of 
the Saxons to the Church is the progressive 
action of the controlling and dissolving elements 
of Protestantism towards the entire negation of 
all religion. For the errors contained in every 
heresy, and which time never fails to intensify, 
involve its certain extinction. Many born in 
those errors, clearly foreseeing these results, have 
already returned to the fold of the Church. This 
movement will be accelerated by the more rapid 
dissolution of Protestantism, consequent on its 
being placed recently under similar hostile legis- 
lation in Switzerland and Germany with the 
Catholic Church. " The blows struck at the 
Church of Rome," such is the acknowledgment 
of one of its own organs, " tell with redoubled 
force against the Evangelical Church." 

With an intelligent positive movement on the 
part of the Church, and by the actual progres- 
sive negative one operating in Protestantism, that 
painful wound inflicted in the sixteenth century 
on Christianity will be soon, let us hope, closed 
up and healed, never again to be re-opened. 



Mixed Saxons Returning. 

Christ blamed the Jews who were skilful in 
detecting the signs of change in the weather for 



The Church and the Age, 55 



their want of skill in discerning the signs of the 
times. There are evidences, and where we should 
first expect to meet them — namely, among the 
mixed Saxon races, the people of England and 
the United States — of this return to the true 
Church. 

The mixture of the Anglo-Saxons with the 
blood of the Celts in former days caused them 
to retain, at the time of the so-called Reforma- 
tion, more of the doctrines, worship, and organi- 
zation of the Catholic Church than did the 
thorough Saxons of Germany. It is for the same 
reason that among them are manifested the first 
unmistakable symptoms of their entrance once 
more into the bosom of the Church. 

At different epochs movements in this direction 
have taken place, but never so serious and gen- 
eral as at the present time. The character and 
the number of the converts from Anglicanism to 
the Catholic Church gave, in the beginning, a 
great alarm to the English nation. But now it 
has become reconciled to the movement, which 
continues and takes its course among the more 
intelligent and influential classes, and that not- 
withstanding the spasmodic cries of alarm and 
the spiteful attacks of the Church's enemies. 

It is clear to those who have eyes to see such 
things that God is bestowing special graces upon 



56 The Church and the Age. 



the English people in our day, and that the hope 
is not without solid foundation which looks for- 
ward to the time when England shall again take 
rank among the Catholic nations. 

The evidences of a movement towards the Ca- 
tholic Church are still clearer and more general 
in the United States. There are less prejudice and 
hostility against the Church in the United States 
than in England, and hence her progress is much 
greater. 

The Catholics, in the beginning of this century, 
stood as one to every two hundred of the whole 
population of the American Republic. The ratio 
of Catholics now is one to six or seven of the 
inhabitants. The Catholics will outnumber, before 
the close of this century, all other believers in 
Christianity put together in the republic. 

This is no fanciful statement, but one based on 
a careful study of statistics, and the estimate is 
moderate. Even should' emigration from Catholic 
countries to the United States cease altogether, 
which it will not, or even should it greatly di- 
minish, the supposed loss or diminution in this 
source of augmentation will be fully compensated 
by the relative increase of births among the Ca- 
tholics as compared with that among other por- 
tions of the population. 

The spirit, the tendencies, and the form of po- 



The Church and the Age. 57 



litical government inherited by the people of the 
United States are strongly and distinctively Sax- 
on ; yet there are no more patriotic or better citi- 
zens in the republic than the Roman Catholics, 
and no more intelligent, practical, and devoted 
Catholics in the Church than the seven millions 
of Catholics in this same young and vigorous re- 
public. The Catholic faith is the only persistent- 
ly progressive religious element, compared with 
the increase of population, in the United States. 
A striking proof that the Catholic Church flour- 
ishes wherever there is honest freedom and wher- 
ever human nature has its full share of liberty! 
Give the Catholic Church equal rights and fair 
play, and she will again win Europe, and with 
Europe the world. 

Now, who will venture to assert that these two 
mixed Saxon nations, of England and the United 
States, are not, in the order of Divine Providence, 
the appointed leaders of the great movement of 
the return of all the Saxons to the Holy Catholic 
Church ? 

The sun, in his early dawn, first touches the high- 
est mountain-tops, and, advancing in his course, 
floods the deepest valleys with his glorious light ; 
and so the Sun of divine grace has begun to en- 
lighten the minds in the highest stations in life in 
England, in the United States, and in Germany ; 



58 The Church and the Age. 



and what human power will impede the exten- 
sion of its holy light to the souls of the whole 
population of these countries? 



Transition of the Latin-Celts. 

Strange action of Divine Providence in ruling 
the nations of this earth ! While the Saxons are 
about to pass from a natural to a supernatural 
career, the Latin-Celts are impatient for, and 
have already entered upon, a natural one. What 
does this mean? Are these races to change their 
relative positions before the face of the world? 

The present movement of transition began on 
the part of the Latin-Celtic nations in the last 
century among the French people, who of all 
these nations stand geographically the nearest to, 
and whose blood is most mingled with that of, 
the Saxons. That transition began in violence, 
because it was provoked to a premature birth by 
the circumstance that the control exercised by 
the Church as the natural moderator of the Chris- 
tian republic of Europe was set aside by Pro- 
testantism ; particularly so in France, in conse- 
quence of a diluted dose of the same Protestant- 
ism under the name of Gallicanism. Exempt 



The Church and the Age. 59 



from this salutary control, kings and the aristo- 
cracy oppressed the people at their own will and 
pleasure ; and the people, in turn, wildly rose up 
in their might, and cut off, at their own will and 
pleasure, the heads of the kings and aristocrats. 
Louis XIV., in his pride, said : " L'Etat c'est 
moi!" The people replied, in their passion: 
" L'Etat c'est nous ! " 

Under the guidance of the Church, the trans- 
formation from feudalism to all that is included 
under the title of modern citizenship was effect- 
ed with order, peace, and benefit to all classes 
concerned. Apart from this aid, society pendu- 
lates from despotism to anarchy, and from anar- 
chy to despotism. The French people at the 
present moment are groping about and earnestly 
seeking after the true path of progress, which 
they lost some time back by their departure from 
the Christian order of society. 

The true movement of Christian progress was 
turned aside into destructive channels ; and this 
movement, becoming revolutionary, has passed in 
our day to the Italian and Spanish nations. 

Looking at things in their broad features, Chris- 
tianity has been apparently exposed to the danger, 
on the one hand, of being exterminated by the 
persecutions of the Saxon races, and, on the 
other, of being denied by the apostasy of the 



6o 



The Church and the Age. 



Latin-Celts. This is the great tribulation of the 
present hour of the Church. She feels the pain- 
ful struggle. The destructive work of crushing 
out Christianity by means of these hostile ten- 
dencies has already begun. If, as some imagine, 
the Christian faith be only possible at the sac- 
rifice of human nature, and if a natural career 
be only possible at the sacrifice of the Christian 
faith, it requires no prophetic eye to foresee the 
sad results to the Christian religion at no distant 
future. 

But it is not so. The principles already laid 
down and proclaimed to the world by the Church 
answer satisfactorily these difficulties. What the 
age demands, what society is seeking for, right- 
ly interpreted, is the knowledge of these princi- 
ples and their practical application to its present 
needs. 

For God is no less the author of nature than 
of grace, of reason than of faith, of this earth 
than of heaven. 

The Word by which all things were made that 
were made, and the Word which was made flesh, 
is one and the same Word. The light which en- 
lighteneth every man that cometh into this world, 
and the light of Christian faith, are, although dif- 
fering in degree, the same light. " There is there- 
fore nothing so foolish or so absurd," to use the 



The Church and the Age. 61 



words of Pius IX. on the same subject, " as to 
suppose there can be any opposition between 
them." * Their connection is intimate, their re- 
lation is primary, they are, in essence, one. For 
what else did Christ become man than to estab- 
lish the kingdom of God on earth as the way to 
the kingdom of God in heaven ? 

It cannot be too often repeated to the men of 
this generation, so many of whom are trying to 
banish and forget God, that God, and God alone, is 
the Creator and Renewer of the world. The same 
God who made all things, and who became man, 
and began the work of regeneration, is the same 
who realh' acts in the Church now upon men and 
society, and who has pledged His word to continue 
to do so until the end of the world. To be guided 
by God's Church is to be guided by God. It is in 
vain to look elsewhere. "Society," as the late 
Pontiff has observed, " has been enclosed in a laby- 
rinth, out of which it will never issue save by the 
hand of God."f The hand of God is the Church. 
It is this hand He is extending, in a more distinc- 
tive and attractive form, to this present generation. 
Blessed generation, if it can only be led to see this 
outstretched hand, and to follow the path of all 
true progress, which it so clearly points out ! 

* " Encyclical to the German Bishops," 1S54. 
f January 24, 1S72. 



62 



The Church and the Age. 
Perspective of the Future. 



During the last three centuries, from the nature 
of the work the Church had to do, the weight of 
her influence had to be mainly exerted on the side 
of restraining human activity. Her present and fu- 
ture influence, due to the completion of her exter- 
nal organization, will be exerted on the side of so- 
liciting increased action. The first was necessarily 
repressive and unpopular ; the second will be, on 
the contrary, expansive and popular. The one ex- 
cited antagonism, the other will attract sympathy 
and cheerful co-operation. The former restraint 
was exercised, not against human activity, but 
against the exaggeration of that activity. The fu- 
ture will be the solicitation of the same activity 
towards its elevation and divine expansion, enhanc- 
ing its fruitfulness and glory. 

These different races of Europe and the United 
States, constituting the body of the most civilized 
nations of the world, united in an intelligent appre- 
ciation of the divine character of the Church, with 
their varied capacities and the great agencies at 
their disposal, would be the providential means of 
rapidly spreading the light of faith over the whole 
world, and of constituting a more Christian state 
of society. 

In this way would be reached a more perfect 



The Church and the Age. 63 



realization of the prediction of the prophets, of 
the promises and prayers of Christ, and of the true 
aspirations of all noble Souls. 

This is what the age I & Jailing for, if rightly un- 
derstood, in its countless theories and projects of 
reform. 



IT 

RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 
IN AMERICA. 



Vyi| 9 HAT relation does Catholicity hold to the 
V3LA» discovery of America and the settlement 
of this country? The discovery of the Western 
continent was eminently a religious enterprise. Co- 
lumbus had in vain sought aid for his great under- 
taking from his native city, Genoa ; from Portugal, 
England, Venice, and the court of Spain ; and it 
was after these fruitless applications that Juan 
Perez, the prior of La Rabida, took up his cause 
and pleaded it with so much earnestness and ability 
in a letter to Queen Isabella that she at once sent 
for Columbus and offered to pledge her jewels to 
obtain funds for the expedition. The motive which 
animated Columbus, in common with the Francis- 
can prior and Isabella the Catholic, was the burn- 
ing desire to carry the blessings of the Christian 

faith to the inhabitants of a new continent, and it 

64 



The Church and the Age. 65 



was the inspiration of this idea which brought a 
new world to light. 

This inspiration has never died out ; if the Span- 
ish and French missionaries did not accompany 
the first discoverers, they followed speedily in their 
tracks, and the work of the conversion of the abo- 
rigines was earnestly begun. In a short time they 
traversed the whole northern continent from the 
mouth of the St. Lawrence to California, and from 
the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson's Bay. Sometimes 
missionaries were slain, but the fearless soldiers of 
the cross continued unceasingly their work of con- 
verting the natives and bringing them into the 
fold of Christ. The pages of history which nar- 
rate the self-sacrificing labors of the missionaries 
to the Indians are among the brightest in the an- 
nals of the Church. 

The raising of the red men to the height of the 
Christian faith was but one of the fruits of the dis- 
covery of the new continent ; another was to offer 
an asylum to all who in other lands were persecut- 
ed and oppressed on account of their religious con- 
victions. Among the first to seek this relief from 
oppression on the virgin soil of the New World 
were the English Catholic colonists under Lord 
Baltimore. To their honor it is to be said that, 
both by the original design of the proprietary, Lord 
Baltimore, and by the legislative enactments of the 



66 



The Church and the Age. 



freemen of the province, there reigned, while their 
rule lasted in Maryland, a perfect equality among 
all Christian denominations, and to all were secured 
the same rights and privileges, civil and religious. 
This act on the part of the colonists of Maryland 
was in harmony with the dictates of right reason 
and the authentic teachings of faith ; for all at- 
tempts to bring by coercion men who differ in 
their religious convictions to uniformity in- the pro- 
fession of religious belief, if successful, would logi- 
cally put an end to all rational religion. Compul- 
sion never gave birth to faith, which is " not by 
any means a blind assent of the mind," * but es- 
sentially an intelligent and voluntary act. Con- 
vinced of this, as Catholics, the idea of religious 
tolerance flowed naturally and consistently in the 
minds of the first settlers on the shores of the Po- 
tomac. It was a noble act on their part to pro- 
claim that within the province and jurisdiction of 
Maryland no Christian man should be molested in 
worshipping God according to the dictates of his 
conscience, and whoever supposes that the Sylla- 
bus teaches anything to the contrary seriously mis- 
takes its meaning. Honor, then, to the pilgrim 
fathers of St. Mary ! who, when the other settle- 
ments had a state-supported church and were in- 
tolerant of all others, asked for themselves no fa- 
* Vatican Council, De Fide, ch. iii. 



The Church and the Age. 67 



vor, but offered equal rights to all ; thus exclud- 
ing the secular authority of the state from inter- 
fering in matters of religion — a principle for which 
the popes, in their struggles with the secular pow- 
ers for the rights of the Church, have always con- 
tended, and for which they still have to contend. 
Let, then, those Catholic Anglo-Americans have 
their due share of praise for the religious tolera- 
tion of which they were the first to give an exam- 
ple — an example, furthermore, which had a forma- 
tive influence in shaping the republic and its free 
institutions. For the principle of the incompeten- 
cy of the state to enact laws controlling matters 
purely religious is the keystone of the arch of Ame- 
rican liberties, and Catholics of all climes can point 
to it with special delight. 

The connection between the republic and the 
Catholic Church, if satisfactorily treated, requires 
that the fundamental principles of the republic 
should be clearly stated, and their relation with 
Protestantism first be disposed of. This is what 
we now attempt. 

The republic of the United States is the result 
of the gathered political wisdom and experience 
of past ages, shaped by a recognition of man's 
natural rights and a trust in his innate capacity 
for self-government beyond what had found ex- 
pression in the prevailing political systems of Eu- - 



68 



The Church and the Age, 



rope. The fundamental articles of the American 
political creed and the formative principles of the 
republic are embodied in the Declaration of In- 
dependence, whence they passed gradually into 
the constitutions of the several States and into 
the Constitution of the United States, and have 
step by step worked their way more or less per- 
fectly into the general and special laws of the 
country. These articles consist principally in the 
declaration " that all men are created equal ; that 
they are endowed by their Creator with certain in- 
alienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness ; that to secure these 
rights governments are instituted among men, de- 
riving their just powers from the consent of the 
governed. " 

These declarations can be looked upon only by 
superficial thinkers as " glittering generalities," for 
some of them are divine and fundamental truths, 
and all are practical verities, having a ground both 
in reason and revelation. They are divine, inas- 
much as they declare the rights of the Creator in 
His creature ; they are fundamental, for without 
the enjoyment of the natural rights which they 
proclaim man is not a man, but a slave or a chat- 
tel ; they are practical, for man is, or ought to be, 
under his Creator, the master of his own destiny 
and free from any dominion not founded in divine 



The Church and the Age. 



6 9 



right. The Creator invested man with these rights 
in order that he might fulfil the duties inseparably 
attached to them. For these rights put man in 
the possession of himself, and leave him free to 
reach the end for which his Creator called him 
into existence. He, therefore, who denies or vio- 
lates these rights offends God, acts the tyrant, and 
is an enemy of mankind. And if there be any su- 
perior merit in the republican polity of the United 
States, it consists chiefly in this: that while it 
adds nothing and can add nothing to man's na 
tural rights, it expresses them more clearly, guards 
them more securely, and protects them more effec- 
tually ; so that man, under its popular institutions, 
enjoys greater liberty in working out his true des- 
tiny. 

Since Christianity claims to be God's revelation 
of the great end for which He created man, it fol- 
lows that those rights without which he cannot 
reach that end must find their sanction, expressed 
or implied, in all true interpretations of its doc- 
trines. 

That the interpretations of Christianity by the 
so-called Reformation,, especially by its leaders, 
neither sanctioned nor even implied the natural 
rights of man, the peculiar articles of its creed 
and its history plainly show. 

When the Puritan Fathers landed on Plymouth 



jo The Church and the Age. 



Rock they brought with them a fixed religious 
creed, whose primary article was " the total de- 
pravity " of human nature, and, as a consequence, 
the loss of free-will ; from which premise it was 
held that man, in his unregenerate state, is not 
able to do any good, but is inclined to all evil. 
This fundamental dogma, when applied to the po- 
litical order, excludes unregenerate men from all 
part in the organization of the state, as well as 
from all participation in the rights and privileges 
of citizenship. Such, too, is the historical fact ; 
political citizenship in Puritan America, where 
they trimmed the state to suit their creed, was 
exclusively granted to members of the orthodox 
church. "All civil power," says the Presbyterian 
Dr. Hodge, " was confined to the members of the 
Church, no person being either eligible to office 
or entitled to the right of suffrage who was not 
in full communion of some church." * The natu- 
ral man had no rights. To be a freeman you 
must be a Puritan. The men who came in the 
Mayflower did not hold the principles which gave 
birth to religious toleration or political liberty in 
the New World. And so far were their traditions 
from the "grand historic lines of the country" 
that it was as late as 1834 that Massachusetts first 
granted full religious liberty, while up to a very 

* Princeton Review, 1863. 



The Church and the Age. 71 



recent date a Catholic was ineligible to office in 
the State of New Hampshire because of his re- 
ligion. Hence there can scarcely be an assertion 
farther from the truth than that made by Ranke 
and D'Aubigne, and repeated by Bancroft and 
others of more or less note, that republican lib- 
erty is due to Protestantism, and due to Protest- 
antism under its most repulsive form — that which 
was given to it by John Calvin. 

An appeal to the New World, where the origi- 
nal Protestant colonies were free to form a politi- 
cal government in accordance with their peculiar 
religious belief, gives no countenance to this per- 
emptory assertion. It is, moreover, made in face 
of the historic testimony of the Old World, for 
nowhere in Europe has Protestantism been fa- 
vorable to popular rights, or called into existence 
what by any honest interpretation can be termed 
a republic. This statement can be easily veri- 
fied. 

During its three centuries of existence a repub- 
lican form of government has nowhere under Pro- 
testant ascendency made its appearance. One will 
look in vain in Germany, the cradle of Protestant- 
ism, for a popular government. The same is true 
of Prussia, England, Scotland, Sweden, and Hol- 
land, for the Dutch Republic was founded upon 
the ancient constitutions of the provinces.. M. 



72 The Church and the Age. 



Guizot, in his Life of John Calvin, rightly dis- 
criminates between the influence of Calvinism on 
churches and the influence of Calvinism on liber- 
ty when he says : " Calvin's Institutes were the 
source of the strength and vitality of the Re- 
formed churches in these countries," but at the 
same time he acknowledges that " their claims 
were incompatible with the progress of liberty " 
(Guizot's Life of John Calvin, ch. v.) " Calvin did 
not believe in man's free-will," says the same au- 
thor, " and he treated it with severity and a kind 
of contempt. Calvin believed and asserted that 
he had more right over other men's opinions and 
actions than he ought to have claimed, and he 
did not show sufficient respect for their rights" 
{ibid.) He knows little of the origin of liberty in 
America or elsewhere who honors in any sense 
John Calvin as its author. 

If Protestants have contributed to human free- 
dom, it was not as Protestants ; the motives which 
prompted them did not spring from their religious 
creed, for that was a foe to human rights and the 
grave of liberty. The servitude of the human will 
in consequence of original sin, as taught by both 
Martin Luther and John Calvin, cut off, root and 
branch, personal, political, civil, intellectual, moral, 
and religious liberty. Protestantism as a religious 
system was an insult to all ideas of freedom. 



The Church and the Age. 73 



Hence it was not due to any principle of liberty 
of the original Protestant colonists that religious 
toleration was made a part of the organic law of 
the republic, but chiefly to the fact that the Pro- 
testant sects were not able to agree, and that there 
was no one # of them sufficiently powerful to press 
its exclusive claim and get its peculiarities incor- 
porated into the Constitution. 

In no place where Protestantism prevailed among 
a people as their religion has it given birth to a 
republic, and nowhere in the nineteenth century 
does there exist a republic in a Protestant land. 
The so-called Reformation, following out its own 
principles, failed altogether to reconcile Christian- 
ity with popular rights. Its spirit and doctrines, 
derived from an exaggerated idea of the sove- 
reignty of God and the utter nullity of man, are 
in accordance with the Oriental mind and suitable 
to an Asiatic despotism, and it deserves credit for 
civil and religious liberty nowhere. As for the 
Puritans in particular, one of their descendants 
covers the whole ground when he says : " I be- 
lieve we are descended from the Puritans, who 
nobly fled from a land of despotism to a land of 
freedom, where they could not only enjoy their 
own religion but prevent everybody else from en- 
joying his." 

Protestantism in its political aspect might be 



74 The Church and the Age. 



defined as a theocratic corporation composed ex- 
clusively of regenerate men of orthodox faith, 
having for its premise the religious dogma con- 
cerning the " total corruption of human nature " 
in consequence of Adam's fall, as taught by its 
leaders, Martin Luther and John Calvin. One 
may repel this conclusion, but it will be at the 
expense of intellectual consistency and historical 
testimony. 

So long as the New England settlements were 
content to remain English colonies it was possi- 
ble for them to hold their peculiar religious ten- 
ets and maintain their exclusive religio-politi- 
cal organization; but when they joined with the 
other colonies, and appealed to the equality by 
creation of all men and the inalienable rights of 
man to justify their separation from Great Bri- 
tain, the Puritans then and there, in sanctioning 
these declarations, entered upon a road which 
necessarily terminated in a radical and total 
change of the peculiar articles of their religious 
creed. For the proclamation of man's natural 
rights involved the overthrow of the whole theo- 
logical structure built by the reform theologians 
upon the corner-stone of man's " total depravity." 
The Puritans, in signing the Declaration of In- 
dependence, signed their own death-warrant. 

A comparison between the two will show this. 



The Church and the Age. 75 



The political system of the Puritans was founded 
on an exaggerated supernaturalism ; the political 
system implied in the truths contained in the 
Declaration of Independence supposed a mere 
naturalism. The former held human nature to be 
totally corrupt ; the latter supposes human nature 
to be essentially good. The one maintained that 
man, by Adam's fall, forfeited all his natural rights ; 
the other declared that the rights of man by na- 
ture are inalienable. The first granted political 
suffrage exclusively to the elect ; the second based 
the right of suffrage on universal manhood. The 
Puritans relied altogether on the strength of di- 
vine grace ; the American republicans trusted in 
the inborn capacity of human nature. The two 
parties started from opposite poles in regard to 
man's rights and the value of human nature. 
The Declaration of Independence was the antith- 
esis of Martin Luther's work on the Slope-will 
and John Calvin's Institutes. 

That Calvinism excludes republicanism in poli- 
tics has been shown ; and that republicanism ex- 
cludes Calvinism in religion we will now endeavor 
to prove. 

The process of this exclusion was a simple one. 
The natural influence of the practical working of 
the American political system, based on universal 
suffrage, is an incitement to the intelligence and 



76 



The Church and the Age. 



conscience of the people under the conviction 
that the choice of the ballot-box will be in the 
main on the side of good government. Frequent 
elections and the popular agitations attending 
them awaken aspirations, excite debate and action, 
and under this stimulating influence the people 
are soon led to trust human reason and to be- 
come conscious of the possession of free-will ; and 
it was quite natural that, as these repressed pow- 
ers grew in strength by action, their leaders should 
assert, and rather defiantly at first, the rights of 
man, should be forward as champions of human 
liberty, and indulge in some pretty " tall talk " 
about the dignity of man and the nobility of hu- 
man nature. Nor can it be a matter of surprise 
that rousing appeals were made to men who, 
under the depressing influence of a religious 
creed, would have lost their manhood, if that 
were possible : " to act out your self/' " obey 
your instincts," " assert your manhood," " be a 
man " ! The extravagant efforts to magnify man 
were the natural rebound from the opposite ex- 
treme of excessive abasement. 

Universal suffrage is the most efficient school 
to awaken general intelligence, to teach a people 
their rights, and to rouse in their bosoms the 
sense of their manhood. For what is a vote? 
It is the recognition of man's intelligence and 



The Church and the Age. 77 



liberty and responsibility, the qualities which con- 
stitute his manhood. It is the admission that 
man, as man, is, and ought to be considered, a 
factor in political society ; that he has the right 
to shape, and in bounden duty ought to shape 
so far as his ability extends, the course of the 
destiny of his country. A vote is a practical 
means by which every man can exercise his right 
and fulfil his duty by making his voice heard 
in the councils of the nation. It is the practical 
application of the truth that " all men are born 
equal " — that is, " all men have an equal right 
to life," to " liberty," and to the " pursuit of 
happiness," and, armed with a ballot, a man has 
the power of maintaining and protecting these 
rights. Every vote rightly understood means at 
least all that has been here stated. The force of 
these truths, by virtue of their application, ef- 
faced from the minds of the offspring of the 
Puritans in - less than two generations the " in- 
jurious impositions of their early catechetical in- 
structions." It is speaking within the bounds 
of moderation to say that scarcely one descend- 
ant of the Puritans in fifty, perhaps not one in 
five hundred — shall we say one in a thousand? 
perhaps not one in ten thousand-— will be found 
who would willingly make, without serious reser- 
vations, an act of faith in the five points of 



78 



The Church and the Age. 



Calvinism. So thorough has been this reaction 
that a good part of the New England people 
now hold that to be Christianity which their 
forefathers would have condemned as the total 
negation of Christianity. This is not to be won- 
dered at when you consider that every time a 
freeman goes to the polls and deposits his vote 
in the ballot-box he virtually condemns the 
dogmas of Protestantism and practically repudi- 
ates the Reformation. The persistent action of 
the ballot-box of the republic outweighed the 
persuasive force of the Puritan pulpit. 

A writer in an English periodical, commenting 
on this religious phase of the New England mind 
resulting from their rejection of the doctrine of 
" total depravity," remarks : " It is now a part of 
the Boston creed that a man born in that city 
has no need to be born again." 

The people may not draw promptly the con- 
clusions which flow from their premises, for they 
often act rather from implicit than explicit con- 
victions ; but in the long run they reach the ex- 
plicit logical conclusion from their premises. The 
early Puritans, in conforming their politics to 
their religion, founded a theocracy ; their descend- 
ants, in conforming their religion to their politi- 
cal principles, founded Unitarianism. " I trust," 
wrote Mr. Jefferson in 1822, " there is not a 



The Church and the Age. 79 



young man now born in the United States who 
will not die an Unitarian." * 

This truth, then, if we mistake not, has been 
clearly shown : that every religious dogma has a 
special bearing on political society, and this bear- 
ing is what constitutes its political principle ; and 
every political principle has a religious bearing, 
and this bearing involves a religious dogma which 
is its premise. And, as a corollary from the above, 
it may be. rightly said that Protestant religious 
dogmas are foreign to republicanism and lead to 
a theocracy in politics ; and that republicanism 
in politics is foreign to Protestantism and leads 
to Unitarianism in religion. But Unitarianism is 
naturalism, and no close observer of the current 
of religious thought of the American people will 
deny that the genius of republicanism is bear- 
ing non-Catholic Americans away to naturalism in 
religion. 

This much being said, the way is now clear to 
treat more satisfactorily of the relation between 
the republic and the Catholic Church. 

There exists a necessary bond and correlation 
between the truths contained in the Declaration 
of Independence and the revealed truths of 
Christianity, since the truths of the natural order 
serve as indispensable supports to the body of 

* Parton's Life of Jefferson , p. 711. 



8o The Church and the Age. 



revealed truths of faith. Deny to man reason, 
and religion can have to him no more meaning 
than to a brute or a machine. Deny the certi- 
tude of reason, and there is no foundation for 
certitude in supernatural faith. Deny the innate 
freedom of the will, and the basis for all mo- 
rality is undermined, and the fountain-head of 
personal, political, and religious liberty dried up. 
Deny to man the gifts of reason and free-will, 
and the natural rights of man which flow from 
these gifts are the wild fancies of a dreamer, 
and a republic founded upon them becomes the 
baseless fabric of a vision. 

The following principles will throw more light 
on the value of human nature, and of the 
bearing of the truths of reason upon the super- 
natural truths of faith, and make our road still 
easier. Reason is the organ of truth, and acts 
upon the truth which lies within its domain with 
infallible certitude. The action of reason im- 
plicitly or explicitly precedes faith ; reason can 
admit the claims of no authority which does 
not appeal with entire trust to its jurisdiction 
for verification ; it can accept none that does 
not accord and blend with its dictates. Man is 
by nature in possession of his free-will ; there- 
fore freedom is a birthright, and he holds it in 
trust from his Creator and is responsible for its 



The Church and the Age, 81 



right use. Human nature, as it now exists, is 
essentially good, and man naturally seeks and 
desires his Creator as the source of his hap- 
piness. Man has lost none of his original facul- 
ties and has forfeited none of his natural rights 
by Adam's fall, and therefore is by nature in 
possession of his natural rights, and it is right- 
ly said : " Among these are life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness." " God has created all men 
equal" in regard to these rights, and therefore no 
one man has the natural right to govern another 
man ; and all political authority in individuals is 
justly said to be derived, under God, from the 
consent of the collective people who are gov- 
erned. The people, under God, associated in a 
body politic, are the source of the sovereign po- 
litical power in the civil state. The light of 
reason is the light of God in the soul, and the 
natural rights of man are conferred by God di- 
rectly upon man ; and therefore a religion which 
does not affirm the value of human reason and 
defend the natural rights of man is baseless, and 
by no manner of means revealed by his Creator, 
but is a delusion or an imposition and worthy 
of no respect. With the light of these state- 
ments, which are in conformity with her authori- 
tative teaching, the connection of the Catholic 
Church with the American republic can easily be 



82 The Church and the Age. 

understood ; the light which they shed lays bare 
to the view of all men the real motives which 
actuate Catholics in their devotion to popular 
rights, and places above all suspicion the sincerity 
of their love for popular institutions. 

The American people in the Declaration of 
Independence avowed unequivocally their belief 
in the value of human nature, made a solemn 
act of loyalty to human reason, grounded their 
popular government on a solid foundation, and 
opened the door which leads directly to the 
truth. The truths asserted were not the fruits 
of philosophical speculations, but evident truths of 
human reasoij; and the rights affirmed were not 
the declamations of political dreamers, but rights 
inseparable from man's rational nature. Nor were 
these truths and these rights proclaimed to the 
world for the first time on the 4th of July, 1776, 
by the Continental Congress of the colonies ; for 
they are as old as human nature, and will be 
found among the traditions of all races of civil- 
ized men. They are not lifeless abstractions but 
living truths, concreted more or less in all 
political governments, in their institutions and 
laws. Freedom is no tender sapling, but a hardy 
tree and of slow growth, whose roots are ground- 
ed in and entwined around the very elements of 
human nature, and under the shelter of its stout 



The Church and the Age. 83 



branches man has reached, through many strug- 
gles, his existing state of manhood. 

The War of Independence was a struggle for 
man's sacred rights and liberties, and in support 
of these rights and liberties the colonists, as 
British subjects, cited the Magna Charta outlined 
by Cardinal Langton and his compeers, and won 
by them from King John in the meadow of 
Runnymede. Upon these inherent and acknow- 
ledged rights of man, and upon the conclusion 
derived from them that no taxation without 
representation ought to be permitted, the founders 
of the American state based their claims. To 
maintain these rights, which they had received as 
a legacy from our common Catholic ancestors, 
the war for independence began, was fought, was 
won ; upon them the republic was erected, and 
stands unchanged and immovable. Had the far- 
seeing Count de Maistre been as well acquaint- 
ed with the history of the American colonies as 
he was with the history of his own country or 
that of England, he would not have hazarded 
the statement, advanced in his Considerations on 
France, that " he did not believe that the United 
States would last " or that " the city of Wash- 
ington would accomplish the object for which it 
was projected. " All the conditions which he 
considered as essential to form a nation, and the 



84 The Church and the Age. 



vital principles necessary to produce a constitu- 
tion, were existing and gave birth to the re- 
public. The republic came forth from these into 
existence as naturally as the flower expands from 
the bud. The illustrious count's distrust of our 
political principles was in contradiction to his 
own political doctrines no less than to the 
truths of his Catholic faith. He whose intellec- 
tual vision is open to the light of first principles 
and their main bearings, and is not altogether 
a stranger to true history, knows full well that 
the Catholic Church has battled her whole life- 
time for those rights of man and that liberty 
which confer the greatest glory on the American 
republic. 

That the pages of history testify to the close 
relationship existing between popular governments 
and the Catholic faith is shown by the fact that 
all republics since the Christian era have sprung 
into existence under the influence of the Catholic 
Church, were founded in the ages of faith and by 
a Catholic people. The republic of San Marino 
has existed in an entirely Catholic population 
in -the heart of Italy one thousand years or more ; 
and that of Andorra, on the borders of Spain 
and France, has stood the same number of years. 
But these republics are small in numbers and in 
extent of territory ? Grant it ; yet they are large 



The Church and the Age. 85 



enough and have existed long enough to illus- 
trate the principle that republicanism is conge- 
nial with the Catholic religion and at home in 
a Catholic population. Then, again, we have the 
Italian republics in Catholic ages — those of Venice, 
Pisa, Genoa, Milan, Florence, Padua, Bologna. In 
fact, there were no less than two hundred repub- 
lics spread over the fair land of Italy. The 
principal Italian cities may be regarded as model 
republics. Some were founded in the ninth, 
others in the tenth or eleventh, century, and 
lasted several hundred years. Venice stood one 
thousand years and more. The Swiss republic 
was founded in mediaeval times, and counts 
among its heroes and martyrs of political liberty 
William Tell and Arnold von Winkelried, both 
of whom were faithful sons of the Catholic 
Church. The republics in South America, though 
rather quarrelsome, are at least the growth of 
a population altogether Catholic. How can we 
explain that the love of liberty and popular in- 
stitutions should thus spring up spontaneously 
and exclusively on Catholic soil, unless it be 
that republicanism and Catholicity have one com- 
mon root ? 

From this point of view it is a matter of no 
surprise that Catholics were the first to proclaim 
religious freedom among the original colonists, 



86 



The Church and the Age. 



and were also among the first and stanchest pa- 
triots in the war for independence. None will be 
found among the signers of the Declaration of 
Independence whose position in society and wealth 
were equal to those of Charles Carroll, the intelli- 
gent, sincere, and fervent Catholic layman. The 
priest who became the first bishop and first arch- 
bishop in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church 
in the United States was the intimate friend of 
Benjamin Franklin, and, an associate with him, 
invited by Congress to engage the Canadians to 
be neutral if they were not ready to join their 
efforts for independence. Washington, with his 
characteristic impartiality, publicly acknowledged 
at the close of the war the patriotic part which 
Catholics as a class had taken in the great strug- 
gle for liberty. No one can appreciate the depth 
of conviction and the strength of affection of Ca- 
tholics for republican institutions unless he sees, 
as they do, the same order of truthr which serve 
as the foundation of his religious belief underlying 
the free institutions of his country. The doctrines 
of the Catholic Church alone give to popular 
rights, and governments founded thereupon, an 
intellectual basis, and furnish their vital principle. 
What a Catholic believes as a member of the 
Catholic Church he believes as a citizen of the 
republic. His religion consecrates his political 



The Chiwch and the Age. 87 



convictions, and this consecration imparts a two- 
fold strength to his patriotism. 

What a Catholic believes as a citizen of the 
republic he believes as a member of the Catholic 
Church; and as the natural supports and strength- 
ens the supernatural, this accounts for the uni- 
versally acknowledged fact that no Catholics are 
more sincere in their religious belief, more loyal 
to the authority of the Church, more generous in 
her support, than the Catholic republican citizens 
of the United States. Catholicity in religion 
sanctions republicanism in politics, and republi- 
canism in politics favors Catholicity in religion. 

Their relationship is so intimate and vital that 
no attack can be made against the Church which 
is not equally a blow against the republic. The 
animus of the so-called Native-American party 
was hostility to the Catholic Church, and its prin- 
ciples were in direct contradiction to the Ameri- 
can bill of rights, and its policy was a flagrant vio- 
lation of that religious, civil, and political liberty 
guaranteed by the Constitution of the United 
States. 

The question of education affords another illus- 
tration. Catholics favor education, none more than 
they, and they take the strongest grounds against 
ignorance, for they look upon ignorance, w r hen 
voluntary, as being frequently something worse 



88 



The Church and the Age. 



than a misfortune; they even condemn it in many 
cases as a sin. They are prepared, if their rights 
be respected, to give their children all the elemen- 
tary, scientific, and moral education of which 
they are capable, and even more than the state 
will ever ask. As an evidence of their spirit and 
devotion to education witness their schools, aca- 
demies, and colleges dotted all over the land. No 
denomination of Christians, no class of American 
citizens, can stand alongside of Catholics when it 
is a question of earnestness and self-sacrifice for 
education. But " No," say the votaries of the 
common-school system to Catholics ; " we insist 
that you shall educate your children according 
to our specially-devised state system ; and, what 
is more, you shall be taxed by the state for its 
support." 

Catholics say in reply that it is no necessary part 
of the function of the state to teach and educate 
children. The education of children is rather a 
parental than a political duty. Besides, to ascribe 
this function to the state to the exclusion of 
the parent is anti-American ; for the genius of 
our political system dictates that the state should 
abstain from all interference in matters which 
can be as well accomplished by individual enter- 
prise or voluntary associations. It is clear that 
the chief aim of the advocates of the present 



The Church and the Age. 89 



public-school system in the United States is less 
the desire for general diffusion of knowledge than 
the advancement of a pet theory of education ; 
and many of them insist upon its exclusive adop- 
tion because they imagine that its spirit and ten- 
dency are against the spread and progress of the 
Catholic faith. They are blind to the fact that it 
is equally destructive to every form of the Chris-, 
tian faith ; that it leaves, because of its practical 
inefficiency, thousands of children in ignorance ; 
that it does violence to the religious convictions 
of a large body of citizens of the republic ; that 
it tramples upon the sacred rights of parents, 
and endangers the state itself by perverting its 
action from its legitimate function. " Heat not a 
furnace so hot that it doth singe yourself " is good 
advice. The so-called American public-school sys- 
tem is a cunningly-devised scheme, under the show 
of zeal for popular education, to force the state, in 
violation of American principles of liberty, to im- 
pose an unjust and heavy tax on its citizens, 
with the intent of injuring the Catholic Church, 
while in the meantime it is sapping in the minds 
of the American youth the foundations of all reli- 
gion and driving them into infidelity. 

There are other questions, agitated only by an 
inconsiderable portion of the American people, 
and equally foreign to the genius and normal 



go The Church and the Age, 



action of the republic. Some would change the 
Constitution of the United States, and, under the 
plea of Christianizing it, make it sectarian ; while 
others, under the garb of liberty, would make the 
state at least pagan, if not atheistic. Had these 
partisans their way, the one would make the 
Church the state, and the other would make the 
( state the Church. Catholics are content with the 
organic law of the republic as it stands, because 
it is as it ought to be. They say to both leagues, 
" Protestant " and " Liberal " : " Hands off from 
the palladium of American rights and freedom ! 
Let there be an open field ; there is no ground for 
fear that truth will be worsted in a fair encounter." 
"Truth," in the inspired words of Holy Writ, "is 
mighty above all things, and will prevail." 

Let it, then, be clearly understood that what 
we maintain is that the common aim of all legiti- 
mate political government is the security of man's 
natural rights ; that the American republic is 
most distinctly founded on this common basis; 
that the Catholic interpretation of Christianity 
emphatically sanctions its declaration of these 
rights, and as the natural and supernatural spring 
from one and the same divine source, " and God 
cannot deny Himself, nor one truth ever contra- 
dict another," * it follows that the republic and 
* Vatican Council, De fide et ratione. 



The Church and the Age. 91 



the Catholic Church can never in their normal 
action, if intelligence reigns, clash, but, by a nec- 
essary law of their existence, mutually aid, advance, 
and complete each other. A citizen of the Ameri- 
can republic who understands himself is all the 
more loyal to the republic because he is a Catho- 
lic, and all the better Catholic because he is loyal 
to the republic. For the doctrines of the Catho- 
lic Church alone furnish him with the principles 
which enable him to make a synthesis between 
republicanism and Christianity. 

As to the financial state of the Church in the 
republic, her strength is in relying for her mate- 
rial support upon the piety of the faithful, and the 
spirit and generosity with which all classes of her 
children respond to this test of the sincerity of 
their faith is an example which has a meaning at 
this moment for the whole Christian world. 

Socially and politically Catholics are slowly tak- 
ing the rank to which their education, virtue, 
wealth, and numbers entitle them among the 
prominent forces of the republic, and the light 
which their religion throws upon its vital princi- 
ples and its Constitution will make them con- 
spicuous as intelligent and patriotic citizens. 

The future of the United States belongs, under 
God, to that religion which, by its conscious pos- 
session of truth and by the indwelling Spirit of 



9 2 



The Church and the Age. 



divine love, shall succeed in bringing the Ameri- 
can people to unity in their religious belief and 
action, as they are actually one in the political 
sense. It would be the utter despair of reason 
to suppose that truth cannot be known with certi- 
tude, and it is the virtual denial of God to ques- 
tion His readiness to fill the hearts of all men 
with His love. The thought that the existing 
wranglings in religion are to go on and increase 
for ever can only enter base minds and satisfy 
vulgar souls. 

But admitting all that has been said to be 
true, it may be urged that the faith of the greater 
part of Catholics who come here from abroad 
rests on a traditional and historical basis almost 
exclusively ; and conceding that this traditional 
faith will be firm enough to keep its hold upon 
the immigrants and retain them in the fold of the 
Church until death, the question starts up forci- 
bly here : Will not the Catholic faith continue on 
a traditional basis and, under the influence of re- 
publicanism, lose its hold, in one or two, or at 
most in three generations, on the immigrants' 
children ? 

It is too obvious to admit of denial that a 
people born and educated under the influence of 
popular institutions will tend to exalt reason, and 
emphas ; ze the positive instincts of human nature, 



The Church and the Age. 93 



and be apt to look upon the intrinsic reason of 
things as the only criterion of truth. It is equally 
clear that the Catholic Church, if she is to keep 
within her fold those who have received her bap- 
tism, and to captivate an intelligent and energetic 
people like the Americans, will have to receive 
their challenge and be ready to answer satisfacto- 
rily the problems of reason ; meet fully the de- 
mands of their spiritual nature ; bless and sanctify 
the imagination and senses and all man's God- 
given instincts. And while answering the most 
energetic and sublime intelligence of the man at 
the bar of reason, she will have to know how to 
retain her sweet and gentle hold on the tender- 
est affections of the child. 

This task will not be an arduous one ; for, as 
has been show r n, the authoritative teachings of the 
Catholic Church maintain the natural order as the 
basis of the supernatural. In the minds of many 
Catholicity is still identified with a Christianity 
whose type was Calvinism. Hence they do them- 
selves the injustice to believe that in rejecting 
Calvinism they have also rejected Christianity al- 
together. But they can easily be made aware 
that the truths on which they based their rejec- 
tion of Calvinism are affirmed by Catholicity. 
What they did in their repudiation of Calvinism 
— and Calvinism is nothing else but the logical 



94 The Church and the Age. 

basis of Protestantism — was only a repetition of 
the anathemas of the fathers of the Council of 
Trent, and their action at bottom was founded 
mainly on the same reasons. They have abjured 
Protestantism, and never can be led to go back 
to what they know to be hostile to the genius 
of their country, contrary to the dictates of rea- 
son, and repugnant to their holiest affections. 
Its promised heaven has lost for them all attrac- 
tions ; its hell no longer excites fear in their 
bosoms ; and its ministers openly confess that, 
as a religious system, Protestantism fails to exer- 
cise any authority over the minds, or to exert any 
influence on the conduct, of the majority of the 
American people. It demands from them a crip- 
pling of their nature and a sacrifice of its rights ; 
once its thraldom has been broken, nothing can 
induce them to restore it. These minds have im- 
peached Protestantism on Catholic grounds ; and 
when they have been led to see that, their pre- 
judices against Christianity will be removed, and 
they will be willing to complete their task. 

They cannot rest content where they are, for the 
human mind was made by its Creator for truth, 
and in the absence of truth it ceases to live. When 
it refuses its assent to truth it is either because 
the truth has been travestied and made to appear 
as false, or because it is seen through a distorted 



The C lucre Ji and the Age. 



95 



medium. For the intellect is powerless to reject 
the truth when seen as the truth, except by com- 
mitting a crime against itself. It is not in the 
search after truth, but in the tranquil possession 
of truth and appropriation of it by contemplation, 
that man finds the fullest and purest joy. Man 
craves to solve the enigma of life, and until this 
solution is known his intelligence cannot be wholly 
content with such a thing as the investigation of 
bugs, or baffled by a word which contains a 
sound and nothing more — the " unknowable." 

Moreover, the American mind in one aspect is 
unlike the European, in that infidelity, scepticism, 
materialism, and atheism cannot find a lodgment 
in it for any length of time. The minds of Ameri- 
cans, like the native soil of their country, have 
something virginal, and furnish no nourishment 
for these poisonous weeds, which, failing to take 
root, soon wither. There is a profound reason for 
this, and k will bear explanation. The reason 
may be found here : the denial of any one truth, 
carried out to its logical consequences, involves the 
denial of all truth. The so-called Reformers of 
the sixteenth century began by denying the super- 
natural origin and the divine institution of the 
Church, and by force of logical sequence proceed- 
ed to the denial of its divine authority, and thus, 
by progression, to the denial of all supernatural 

m 



9 6 



The Church and the Age. 



truth ; thence the denial descended to philosophy, 
to politics, to the entire natural order of truth, 
and finally to the denial of Him from whom pro- 
ceeds all truth, ending in its logical termination — 
atheism. The dominant intellectual tendency of 
Europe has, during these last three centuries, fol- 
lowed the law of negative sequence of error to its 
ultimate logical conclusion. 

On the other hand, the affirmation of any one 
truth, logically followed out, leads to the know- 
ledge and affirmation of all truth. The American 
republic began afresh in the last century by the 
declaration of certain evident truths of reason. 
The law of its progression consists in tracing these 
truths out to their logical connection with all other 
truths, and finally coming to the knowledge of all 
truth, both in the natural and supernatural order, 
ending in the affirmation of universal truth and 
the union with the source of all truth— God. The 
dominant tendency of the American people is 
towards the law of the positive sequence of truth. 
The course of Europe was that of negation ; the 
course of the United States was that of affirmation. 
The first was destructive, the second was construc- 
tive. The one was degrading, the other was ele- 
vating. That bred dissension, this created union. 
Europe, under the lead of the religious revolution 
of the sixteenth century, turned its back on Catho- 



The Church and the Age. 



97 



licity and entered upon the downward road that 
ends in death ; the republic of the United States, 
in affirming man's natural rights, started in the 
eighteenth century with its face to Catholicity, and 
is in the ascending way of life to God. 

From this point of view the Declaration of Ame- 
rican Independence has a higher than political 
meaning, and it may be said to be the turning- 
point in history from a negation to an affirmation 
of truth : interpreting democracy not as a down- 
ward but as an upward movement, and placing 
political society anew on the road to assist man in 
the fulfilment of his divine destiny. 

Christianity, like republicanism, has in the last 
analysis to rely for its reception and success on 
reason and conscience and the innate powers of 
human nature, graciously aided from above as they 
always are. Let it once be shown that the Catho- 
lic interpretation of Christianity is consonant with 
the dictates of human reason, in accordance with 
man's normal feelings, favorable to the highest con- 
ceptions of man's dignity, and that it presents to 
his intelligence a destiny which awakens the utter- 
most action and devotion of all his powers, and you 
have opened the door to the American people for 
the reception of the complete evidence of the claims 
of the Catholic Church, and prepared the way for 
the universal acceptance of her divine character. 



98 



The Church and the Age. 



There is a general conviction abroad that the 
people's share in the government of a nation ought 
to be enlarged. It must be admitted that the 
American republic has contributed not a little to 
form and support this conviction. But the prin- 
ciples of the republic are not, like those of an 
Utopia, in the air ; they are fixedly rooted in the 
ground of reason and revealed truth. If the 
framers of the republic set aside certain privileges 
and institutions inherited from pagan, barbaric, 
or feudal times, it was not to break with the past, 
but because these things were unserviceable to a 
people with the spirit and in the circumstances 
of the colonists. They were, besides, no less in- 
harmonious with the more rational ideas of equity 
due to Christian influences; and by their omission 
the founders of the republic providentially ad- 
vanced political government, at least for all peo- 
ples similarly situated. 

When the nature of the American republic is 
better understood, and the exposition of Chris- 
tianity is shaped in the light of its own universal 
principles so as to suit the peculiarities of the 
American mind, the Catholic Church will not only 
keep her baptized American children in her fold, 
but will at the same time remove the prejudices 
existing in the minds of a large class of non 
Catholics, and the dangers apprehended from the 



The Church and the Age. 99 



influence of republicanism will be turned into 
fresh evidences of the Church's divine character. 

To sum up : He who does not see the hand of 
Divine Providence leading to the discovery of the 
western continent, and directing its settlement 
and subsequent events towards a more complete 
application to political society of the universal 
truths affirmed alike by human reason and Chris- 
tianity, will fail to interpret rightly and adequate- 
ly the history of the United States. It is also 
true that he who sees Heaven's hand in these 
events, and fails to see that Christ organized a 
body of men to guard and teach these universal 
truths to mankind, with the promise of His pre- 
sence to the end of the world, will fail to inter- 
pret rightly and adequately the history of Chris- 
tianity. He is like a man who sees the light but 
has his back turned to the sun which gives it. 
But the discerning mind will not fail to see that 
the republic and the Catholic Church are working 
together under the same divine guidance, forming 
the various races of men and nationalities into a 
homogeneous people, and by their united action 
giving a bright promise of a broader and higher 
development of man than has been heretofore ac- 
complished. 

L.ot C. 



III. 

CARDINAL GIBBONS AND AMERI- 
CAN INSTITUTIONS. 



HE following is the address of Cardinal 
Gibbons as published in the daily papers, 
on his taking possession of his titular church in 
Rome, March 25 : 

" The assignment to me by the Holy Father of this beautiful 
basilica as my titular church fills me with feelings of joy and 
gratitude which any words of mine are wholly inadequate 
to express. For as here in Rome I stand within the first 
temple raised in honor of the ever-blessed Virgin Mary, so in 
my far-off home my own cathedral church, the oldest in the 
United States, is also dedicated to the Mother of God. 

" That never-ceasing solicitude which the Sovereign Pontiffs 
have exhibited in erecting those material temples which are 
the glory of this city, they have also manifested on a larger 
scale in rearing spiritual walls to Sion throughout Christen- 
dom in every age. Scarcely were the United States of America 
formed into an independent government when Pope Pius 
VII. established therein a Catholic hierarchy and appointed 
the illustrious John Carroll the first bishop of Baltimore. Our 
Catholic community in those days numbered only a few thou- 
sand souls, and they were scattered chiefly through the States 

100 




The CJmrch and the Age, 



101 



of New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. They were 
served by the merest handful of priests. But now, thanks 
to the fructifying grace of God, the grain of mustard-seed 
then planted has grown a large tree, spreading its branches 
through the length and breadth of our fair land. Where 
only one bishop was found in the beginning of this century 
there are now seventy-five exercising spiritual jurisdiction. 
For this great progress we are indebted, under God and the 
fostering care of the Holy See, to the civil liberty we enjoy 
in our enlightened republic. 

" Our Holy Father, Leo XIII., in his luminous encyclical 
on the Constitution of Christian States, declares that the 
Church is not committed to any particular form of civil gov- 
ernment. She adapts herself to all. She leavens all with 
the sacred leaven of the Gospel. She has lived under absolute 
empireSj under constitutional monarchies, and in free repub- 
lics, and everywhere she grows and expands. She has often, 
indeed, been hampered in her divine mission. She has often 
been forced to struggle for existence wherever despotism 
has cast its dark shadow, like a plant shut out from the blessed 
sunlight of heaven. But in the genial atmosphere of liberty 
she blossoms like the rose. 

" For myself, as a citizen of the United States, and without 
closing my eyes to our shortcomings as a nation, I say with 
a deep sense of pr'de and gratitude that I belong to a country 
where the civil government holds over us the aegis of its pro- 
tection without interfering with us in the legitimate exercise 
of our sublime mission as ministers of the Gospel cf Christ. 
Our country has libetty without license, and authority with- 
out despotism. She rears no wall to exclude the stranger 
from coming among us. She has few frowning fortifications 
to repel the invader, for she is at peace with all the world. 
She rests secure in the conciousness of her strength and 
her good-will toward all. Her harbors are open to welcome 



102 The Church and the Age. 



the honest immigrant who comes to advance his temporal in- 
terests and find a peaceful home But while we are acknow- 
ledged to have a free government, perhaps we do not receive 
the credit that belongs to us for having also a strong govern- 
ment. Yes, our nation is strong, and her strength lies, under 
the overruling guidance of Providence, in the majesty and 
supremacy of the law, in the loyalty of her citizens, and in 
the affection of her people for her free institutions. 

"There are, indeed, grave social problems now engaging 
the earnest attention of the citizens of the United States ; 
but I have no doubt that, with God's blessing, these problems 
will be solved by the calm judgment and sound sense of the 
American people without violence or revolution or any injury 
to individual right. 

"As an evidence of his good-will for the great republic in 
the West, and as a mark of his appreciation of the venerable 
hierarchy of the United States, and as an expression of his 
kind consideration for the ancient see of Baltimore, our 
Holy Father has been graciously pleased to elevate its pre- 
sent incumbent, in my humble person, to the dignity of the 
purple. For this mark of his exalted favor I beg to tender 
the Holy Father my profound thanks in my own name and 
in the name of the clergy and the faithful. I venture to thank 
him, also, in the name of my venerable colleagues the bishops, 
as well as the clergy and the Catholic laity of the United 
States. I presume to also thank him in the name of our sepa- 
rated brethren in America, who, though not sharing our faith, 
have shown that they are not insensible — indeed, that they are 
deeply sensible — of the honor conferred upon our common 
country, and have again and again expressed their warm admi- 
ration for the enlightened statesmanship and apostolic virtues 
and benevolent character of the illustrious Pontiff who now 
sits in the chair of St. Peter." 



The Church and the Age. 



103 



Cardinal Gibbons's office is one that outranks 
all others in the Church in America, and his inter- 
pretation of our American institutions is worthy 
of his position. The convictions he has express- 
ed have doubtless animated his whole life as a 
Catholic and a citizen, and all his countrymen will 
rejoice that he has uttered them with so much 
emphasis and bravery, and that he has done it in 
the centre of Christendom. Americans will thank 
him for it, and accept him as their representative 
there, for he is fitted by his thorough-going 
American spirit to interpret us to the peoples and 
powers of the Old World. Americans do not 
want the pope, at the head of the most august as- 
sembly in the world, representing the whole Chris- 
tian Church, to speak in favor of empires, mon- 
archies, or republics : that we do not want. What 
we want is the American cardinal to do what he 
has done ; to have the courage of his convictions 
there and everywhere else, as. becomes our cardinal, 
so far as he represents the American republic. 

It reminds one of Benjamin Franklin champion- 
ing our cause in Europe before and during the 
Revolutionary war. What Franklin maintained 
was that we were not in rebellion ; the American 
colonies were not guilty of that kind of revolution 
which is a crime. They were fighting for princi- 
ples which had always been an Englishman's birth- 



104 The Church and the Age. 



right, and, I may add, part of the inheritance of 
all Catholic peoples. Franklin held that the rebels 
and revolutionists were the members of the British 
government. And the fact that that was an in- 
tense personal conviction with him added immense- 
ly to his force as our ambassador,* The Ameri- 
cans never intended to be rebels ; they were not 
rebels. Nowhere in their fundamental law will 
you find rebellion erected into a principle. So, 
like Benjamin Franklin, the American cardinal 
holds, if not officially yet morally, a like place as 
representing America to those monarchists of Eu- 
rope who are suspicious of us and who do not ap- 
preciate our institutions. The cardinal will be ac- 
cepted as an American representative, locate him 
where you please — Rome, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, or 

* The following is an extract from Franklin's examination be- 
fore the House of Commons : " Question. How, then, could the 
Assembly of Pennsylvania assert that laying a tax on them by 
the Stamp Act was an infringement of their rights? Answer. 
They understood it thus : by the same charter, and otherwise, 
they are entitled to all the privileges and liberties of English- 
men. They find in the Great Charter and the Petition and De- 
claration of Rights that one of the privileges of English subjects 
is that they are not to be taxed but by their common consent ; 
they have therefore relied upon, from the first settlement of the 
province, that the Parliament never would nor could, by color of 
that clause in the charter, assume a right of taxing them till it 
had qualified itself to exercise such right by admitting represen- 
tatives from the people to be taxed, who ought to make a part of 
that common consent " (Bigelow's Life of Franklin, vol. i. chap. 
4). 



The Church and the Age. 105 



London. His office constitutes him our high com- 
missioner, and gives him a right to be heard in the 
serene atmosphere of the Roman Curia, itself not 
unknowing of liberty and equality in their true 
sense. St. Augustine's words have ever described 
the Church's view of human authority, civil or ec- 
clesiastical : 

Christians in office 11 rule not from a love of power, but from 
a sense of the duty they owe to others ; not because they are 
proud of authority, but because they love mercy. This is pre- 
scribed by the order of nature ; it is thus God created man. For 
1 let them,' He says. \ have dominion over the fish of the sea, and 
over the fowl of the air, and over every creeping thing which 
creepeth upon the earth.* He did not intend that His rational 
creature, who was made in His image, should have dominion 
over anything but the irrational creation — not man over man, 
but man over the beasts. And hence the righteous men in 
primitive times were made shepherds of cattle rather than kings 
of men, God intending thus to teach us what the relative posi- 
tion of the creatures is, and what the desert of sin ; for it is with 
justice, we believe, that the condition of slavery is the result of 
sin.'* * 

And how often soever the Holy See may have 
counselled men to respect legitimate authority, her 
great battles have ever been with those who have 
abused authority. 

The Catholic Church has flourished under all 
forms of government. Her Divine Founder has 
given her an organism capable of adjustment to 

* City of God, book xix. chap. 14-15. 



io6 The Church and the Age. 



every legitimate human institution. She tends to 
make the people loyal to the reasonable authority 
of the state, and her influence will strengthen them 
in the virtues necessary for the public welfare ; it 
has always done so. But the form of government 
of the United States is preferable to Catholics 
above other forms. It is more favorable than 
others to the practice of those virtues which are 
the necessary conditions of the development of the 
religious life of man. This government leaves men 
a larger margin for liberty of action, and hence for 
co-operation with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, 
than any other government under the sun. Speak- 
ing of the human rights set forth in the Declaration 
of Independence, the present writer has said that — 

" They are divine inasmuch as they declare the rights of the 
Creator in His creature ; they are fundamental, for without the 
enjoyment of the natural rights which they proclaim man is not 
a man, but a slave or a chattel ; they are practical, for man is, or 
ought to be, under his Creator, the master of hjs own destiny 
and free from any dominion not founds i in divine right. The 
Creator invested man with these rights in order that he might 
fulfil the duties insepatably attached to them. For these rights 
put man in possession of himself, and leave him free to reach 
the end for which his Creator called him into existence. He, 
therefore, who denies or violates these rights offends God, acts 
the tyrant, and is an enemy of mankind. And if there be any 
superior merit in the republican polity of the United States it 
consists chiefly in this : that while it adds nothing, and can add 
nothing, to man's natural rights, it expresses more clearly, 



The Church and the Age. 107 



guards more securely, and protects more effectually these rights ; 
so that man under its popular institutions enjoys greater liberty 
in working out his true destiny." 

The Catholic Church will, therefore, flourish all 
the more in this republican country in proportion 
as Catholics in their civil life keep to the lines of 
their republicanism. This proposition will still be 
true even should the New England mind become 
the prevailing type among us. 

In the light of these principles it is an error, radi- 
cal and gross, to say that the basis of the American 
character is the spirit of political and religious re- 
bellion. The character that is formed by the in- 
stitutions of our country and the Catholic character 
are not antagonistic. American institutions tend 
to develop independence — personal independence 
and love of liberty. Christianity rightly under- 
stood is seen to foster these qualities. For what 
other object did the martyrs die than to establish 
their personal convictions against the decrees of 
emperors ? " You keep the laws of your sove- 
reign," said the martyr St. Lucy to the Roman 
official ; " I keep the laws of my God. You fear 
Caesar ; I fear the one true God, whom I serve. 
You are desirous of pleasing men ; I desire to please 
Jesus Christ alone. Do you pretend to deprive me 
of the right of acting according to the dictates of my 
reason and conscience ? " Said Sts. Perpetua and 



io8 The Church and the Age. 



Felicitas, as they entered the amphitheatre to be 
martyred : " We have willingly come hither, that 
our freedom might suffer no interference. We glad- 
ly lay down our lives to avoid doing anything con- 
trary to our holy religion. " And in like manner 
the peaceful triumphs of Catholic virtue have had 
no other motive than an heroic purpose to serve 
God alone in true liberty of spirit, whether as her- 
mits in the wilderness, or Benedictines in the ab- 
beys that were the centres of religious and civil 
life in the destruction of the Roman Empire and 
the rushing down of the barbarians, or in the vari- 
ous orders and societies, founded since then, in 
which the Church has ever offered a method for 
souls to combine together for freedom and peace, 
for their own and their neighbor's sanctification. 

What we need to-day is men whose spirit is that 
of the early martyrs. We shall get them in pro- 
portion as Catholics cultivate a spirit of indepen- 
dence and personal conviction. The highest de- 
velopment of religion in the soul is when it is as- 
sisted by free contemplation of the ultimate causes 
of things. Intelligence and liberty are the human 
environments most favorable to the deepening of 
personal conviction of religious truth and obedi- 
ence to the interior movements of an enlightened 
conscience. Mr. Lilly, in one of his brilliant es- 
says, affirms that the question of the hour is the 



The Church and the Age. 109 



existence of the supernatural. This is well said 
for agnostics ; but for a well-ordered mind I should 
say that the question of the hour is how the soul 
which aspires to the supernatural life shall utilize 
the advantages of human liberty and intelligence. 

We do not need the imperial or kingly ideas of 
the Old World as aids to our spiritual life as Catho- 
lics, any more than we want its anarchical ideas as 
helps to civil freedom as citizens. Neither do we 
wish to plant our American ideas in the soil of 
other nations. The mission of the American Ca- 
tholic is not to propagate his form of government 
in any other country. But there is one wish he 
cherishes in respect to his fellow-Catholics abroad : 
he wants to be rightly understood, and that is a 
wish not easily granted. You, reader, if you had 
been brought up in *a monarchy and sympathized 
with its institutions, as you naturally would have 
done, would not easily understand other forms of 
government. In such things most men are what 
their surroundings make them — you might say all 
men are, if by the word surroundings you take in 
the sum of influences, external and internal, to 
which they are subject. Where will you find a 
man whose most potent teachers have not been his 
race and country ? Honest men in Europe feel 
about democracy as we feel about monarchy. And 
how do you feel about monarchy ? Your truest 



no 



The Church and the Age. 



answer must be, " I don't understand it." And, 
unless you made your home there, you might live 
in a monarchy for years and not understand it, and 
you would not wish to understand it. It does not 
belong to you. The place is not your home; your 
home is far away and far different, and you expect 
sooner or later to go back there. Therefore you 
are not to be blamed for not understanding them, 
nor are they to be blamed for not understanding us. 
When we are abroad, unless called upon to speak, 
as the cardinal was, it is better for us to keep our 
mouths shut. So should foreigners act when in 
this country. 

I do not blame Europeans for not understanding 
us. I only wish to call attention to the many dif- 
ficulties in the way of getting into the minds of 
Europeans true views of American affairs. These 
difficulties Cardinal Gibbons has known how to 
cope with. He has been able to express the 
American idea in such terms as not to be misun- 
derstood. And this was not the triumph of diplo- 
matic cunning, but rather that of sincerity and 
frankness— the true cunning of honest souls. He 
has carried his point by the simplicity of his thought 
and the earnestness of its utterance. There is often 
more in the courage of saying the thing than there 
is in the thing itself: there is both in Cardinal Gib- 
bons's address. For what is a commonplace in this 



The Church and the Age. 1 1 1 



country is striking and singular elsewhere, espe- 
cially in a state of society so differently organized. 
It took courage to say what he did. It was needed 
to be said long ago, but others did not say it. 
Was it lack of courage on their part, or indifference 
to the providential lessons of the times? 

In such cases courage is genius, and we now re- 
joice in its triumph. It was fitting that the best 
expression of the good of civil freedom as a favor- 
able human environment for the development of 
the religious character should be left to be made 
by an American cardinal in the centre of Christen- 
dom. And if I were asked in what the American 
system of government contributed most to this de- 
velopment, I should say that it is by declaring it- 
self incompetent in spirituals. That is what Eu- 
ropeans, especially men in high station, cannot or 
will not understand. 

"Philip II. of Spain," says Baron Hiibner in his Memoir of 
Sixtus V., vol. ii. chap, ii., " looked upon himself as a civil 
vicar of Christ. Whenever, in the fulfilment of this imaginary 
mission, he met with a doubt, he sometimes laid it before his 
ministers, but he preferred to submit it to his confessor, or to 
theologians, or to committees specially appointed to examine it, 
or to congregations composed of doctors of theology. He be- 
lieved he had two missions to fulfil. He was king and also a 
little of a pontiff ; just as the pope is first a pontiff, then king. 
In this groove ran all his ideas. Sixtus V. indignantly rejected 
such pretensions. . . . The deeply-rooted conviction that he was 



1 1 2 The Church and the Age. 



the civil vicar of Christ on earth can be frequently traced in 
Philip's letters, and is reproduced in the language of his agents. " 

Potentates wished, and still wish, to be pontiffs. 
When dynasties give place to oligarchies, aristocrats 
wish to be on a par with cardinals. When the tide 
of atheistic revolution has swept them all away, 
and blasphemers of the prime verities of reason 
and revelation are floated into power, they in turn 
feel under obligation as civil rulers to care for the 
supreme interests of religion. King Philip and 
Gambetta, Louis Quartorze, the two Napoleons, 
and Bismarck and Paul Bert, must nominate bish- 
ops ; each must play censor depiitatus for catechisms 
and theologies ; monarchy, aristocracy, bureaucracy, 
anarchical and atheistic democracy, each inherits 
from its predecessor the craving for ecclesiastical 
authority. The Throne of the Fisherman has not 
had authority enough to publish in Catholic coun- 
tries its own apostolic decrees without an incessant 
diplomatic war over the state's placet. In Joseph 
II. 's case this meddling of the state with spirituals 
was carried into the very sacristy. Without wish- 
ing to go too far the other way, I affirm that this 
interference by government can never be imposed 
on the American people. We are glad to see the 
American cardinal of the same mind. When Church 
and state were brought into contact in Philip's 
reign he posed as the Constantine of Christendom, 



The Church and the Age. 



and Louis Quatorze did worse. Here in America, 
when Church and state come together, the state 
says, I am not competent in ecclesiastical affairs ; I 
leave religion in its full liberty. That is what is 
meant here by separation of Church and state, and 
that is precisely what Europeans cannot or will not 
understand. They want to make out that the 
American state claims to be indifferent to religion. 
They accuse us of having a theory of government 
which ignores the moral precepts of the natural 
law and of the Gospel. Such is not the case, and 
never has been from the beginning. That is a false 
interpretation of the American state. By ecclesi- 
astical affairs we mean that organic embodiment 
of Christianity which the Church is in her creeds, 
her hierarchy, and her polity. The American state 
says in reference to all this, I have no manner of 
right to meddle with you ; I have no jurisdiction. 
By morals, on the other hand, we mean those in- 
fluences of natural and revealed religion whose 
sway is general among the vast popular electorate 
of our country, uniform and definite enough to be 
a quickening influence upon our public life. To 
disregard this has ever been deemed a crime 
against good government among us, and punished 
accordingly. 

The cardinal's address, taken in connection with 
other events in Pope Leo's pontificate, marks an 



ii4 



The Church and the Age. 



epoch in the world's history. If, as many think, 
democracy will soon assume control of public af- 
fairs in the old world, the question is, What kind 
of a democracy will it be ; what influence will be 
powerful enough to guide it morally aright? No 
sectarian form of Christianity can be the guide 
of mighty human forces. So far as men are sec- 
tarians, so far do they deviate from the universal 
truth ; and only the universal principles of reason 
and revelation grasped and wielded by such an 
organic world-power as the Catholic Church can 
guide aright the tumultuous masses of mankind 
when the transition from one phase of civilization 
to another has begun. The power that could tame 
the barbarian ancestors of the civilized world ex- 
hibits in such men and such utterances as have 
been herein considered a force competent to guide 
to its proper destiny the baptized democracy of 
our day. And we may say in passing that it is 
difficult to exaggerate the majesty and power which 
a body of men representing the whole Catholic 
Church, as the Council of Trent intended the car- 
dinals to do, would possess and exert the world 
over ; the decision of such a body, with the Pope 
at its head, could not fail to be final. 



i 



IV. 

THE CHURCH AND ITALY 



«^ ' HE revolutionary movement in Italy headed 
V-^J by Victor Emmanuel step by step trampled 
under foot every principle of religion, morality, 
and justice that stood between it and its goal. 
No pretext of the welfare of a people, even when 
based on truth, can ever make perfidy and treach- 
ery lawful, or furnish a covering of texture thick 
enough to hide from intelligent and upright minds 
so long and black a list of misdeeds as the Pied- 
montese subjugation of Southern Italy contains. 
" All iniquity of nations is execrable." That the 
natural desire for unity among the Italian people 
might have been realized by • proper and just 
means, had the religious, intelligent, and influential 
classes exerted themselves as they were in duty 
bound to do, there is little room for reasonable 
doubt. For it would be an unpleasant thing to 
admit that civilized society, after the action of 
nineteen centuries of Christianity, could find no 

«5 



n6 The Chtirch and the Age. 



way to satisfy a legitimate aspiration, except by a 
process involving the violation and subversion of 
those principles of justice, right, and religion for 
the maintenance and security of which human 
society is organized and established. It is indeed 
strange to see the Latin races, which accepted 
so thoroughly and for so long a period the true 
Christian faith, now everywhere subject to violent 
and revolutionary changes in their political condi- 
tion. How is this to be reconciled with the fact 
that Christianity, in response to the primitive 
instincts of human nature, and in consonance with 
the laws which govern the whole universe, aims 
at, and actually brings about when followed, the 
greatest happiness of man upon earth while secur- 
ing his perfect bliss hereafter ? For so runs the 
promise of the Divine Founder of Christianity: 
" A hundred-fold more in this life, and in the world 
to come life everlasting." 

What has beguiled so large a number of the 
people of Italy, once so profoundly Catholic, that 
now they should take up the false principles of 
revolution, should accept a pseudo-science, and 
unite with secret atheistical societies? How has 
it come to pass that a people who poured out 
their blood as freely as water in testimony and 
defence of the Catholic religion, whose history 
has given innumerable examples of the highest 



The Church and the Age. 117 



form of Christian heroism in ages past, now fol- 
lows willingly, or at least submits tamely, to the 
dictation of leaders who are animated with hatred 
to the Catholic Church, and are bent on the ex- 
termination of the Christian faith, and with it of 
all religion ? 

Only those who can read in the seeds of time 
can tell whether such signs as these are to be in- 
terpreted as the beginning of the apostasy of the 
Latin nations from Christianity and their disinte- 
gration and ruin ; or whether these events are 
evidence of a latent capacity and a youthful but 
ill-regulated strength pointing out a transition to 
a new and better order of things in the. future. 

It is not a matter of surprise that Catholics of 
an active faith and a deep sense of personal re- 
sponsibility feel uneasy at seeing things go from 
bad to worse in nations which they have been 
accustomed to look upon as pre-eminently Cath- 
olic. Nor is it in human nature for men of ener- 
getic wills and sincere patriotism to content them- 
selves when they see the demagogues of false 
liberty and the conspirators of atheistical secret 
societies coming to the front and aiming at the 
destruction of all that makes a country dear to 
honest men. Nowhere does the Catholic Church 
teach that the love of one's country is antagonistic 
to the love of God ; nor does the light of her 



1 1 8 The Church and the Age. 

faith allure to an ignoble repose, or her spirit 
render her members slaves or cowards. - 

The Unity of Italy. 

The idea of unity responds to one of the no- 
blest aspirations of the soul, and wherever it exists 
it gives birth to just hopes of true greatness. 
Would that the cry for unity were heard from 
the hearts of the inhabitants of the whole earth, 
and that the inward struggle which rages in men's 
bosoms, and the outward discord which prevails 
between man and man, between nations and na- 
tions, and between races and races, had for ever 
passed away ! 

" When will the hundred summers die, 
And thought and time be born again, 
And newer knowledge, drawing nigh, 

Bring truth that sways the hearts of men?" 

Unity is the essence of the Godhead and the 
animating principle of God's Church ; and wherever 
her spirit penetrates, there the natural desire for 
unity implanted in the human heart is intensified 
and "universalized, and man seeks to give to it an 
adequate embodiment in every sphere of his 
activity. It was this natural instinct for unity 
guided by the genius of Catholicity that formed 
the scattered tribes of Europe of former days in- 
to nations, uniting them in a grand universal 



V 



The Church and the Age. 



119 



republic which was properly called Christendom. 
Who knows but, as there reigned, by the action 
of an overruling Providence, a political unity in 
the ancient world which paved the way for the 
introduction of Christianity, that so there may be 
in preparation a more perfect political unity of 
peoples and nations in the modern world to open 
the way for the universal triumph of Christianity? 

But there is a wide difference between recogniz- 
ing that political unity is favorable to the strength 
and greatness of nations and the spread and vic- 
tory of Christianity, and the acceptance of the 
errors of a class of its promoters, the approval of 
their injustice, or a compromise with their crimes. 

The actual question, therefore, is not concern- 
ing the union of the Italian people in one nation, 
or whether their present unity will be lasting, or 
revoked, or by internal weakness be dissolved, or 
shaped in some way for the better. But the actual 
and pressing question is, How can Italy be with- 
drawn from the designing men who have managed 
to get control over her political government under 
the cloak of Italian unity, and who are plainly 
leading her on towards a precipice like that of the 
French Revolution ? 

There is running through all things, both good 
and evil, an unconquerable law of logic. What is 
uu^ r ^jj sm on Sunday becomes license on Mon- 



120 The Church and the Age. 



day, revolutionism on Tuesday, internationalism on 
Wednesday, socialism on Thursday, communism on 
Friday, and anarchy on Saturday. He who only 
sees the battered stones made by the cannon fired 
against its walls when the Piedmontese soldiers en- 
tered into Rome by Porta Pia, sees naught. There 
are more notable signs than these for him who 
knows how to read them. 

Is there a man so simple or so ignorant of the 
temper and designs of the conspirators against civil- 
ized society in Europe, as well as in our own free 
country, who fancies that these desperate men will 
shrink from shaping their acts in accordance with 
their ulterior aims? 

No one who witnessed the reception of Garibaldi 
in Rome in the winter of 1875 can doubt as to 
who holds the place of leader among a very large 
class of the population of Italy. The views of 
this man and the party to which he belongs are no 
secret. "The fall of the Commune," he wrote in 
June, 1873, " is a misfortune for the whole universe 
and a defeat for ever to be regretted. ... I be- 
long to the internationals, and I declare that if I 
should see arise a society of demons having for 
its object to combat sovereigns and priests, I 
Would enroll myself in their ranks." 

But is there not a sufficient number of conserva- 
tives in the present national party of Italy to stop 



The Church and the Age. 121 

the men now at the head of affairs before they 
reach their ultimate designs ? Perhaps so ; it 
would be pleasant to believe this. But the pre- 
sent aspect of affairs gives but little hope of this 
being true. These conservatives, who did not, or 
could not, or would not stop the spoliation of the 
Church and the trampling upon her sacred rights ; 
these conservatives, who did not take measures to 
hinder the Italian radicals from possessing them- 
selves of the legislative power of the present gov- 
ernment and pursuing their criminal course — these 
are not the men to build one's hopes upon in stem- 
ming the tide that is now sweeping Italy to her 
destruction. 

The Church and the Rights of Man. 
How much of the present condition of the Latin 
peoples, politically, commercially, or socially con- 
sidered, can be satisfactorily accounted for on the 
score of climate, or on that of their .characteristics 
as a race, or the stage of their historical develop- 
ment, or the change made in the channels of com- 
merce by new discoveries, it is not our purpose to 
examine. One declaration we have no hesitation 
in making at the outset, and that is : If the Latin 
nations are not in all respects at the present mo- 
ment equal to others, it is due to one or more of 
the above-enumerated causes, and not owing, as 



122 The Church and the Age. 



some partisans and infidels would have the world 
believe, to the doctrines of their religious faith. 

The Catholic Church cannot be held responsible 
for the decay of any people in the natural order ; 
for she affirms the natural order, upholds the 
value of human reason, and asserts the natural 
rights of man. Her doctrines teach that reason is 
at the basis of revelation, that human nature is the 
groundwork of divine grace, and that the aim of 
Christianity is not the repression or obliteration of 
the capacities and instincts of man, but their eleva- 
tion, expansion, and deification. 

A few words about^ the relation of the Catholic 
Church to the natural rights of man — for on them 
the liberty of Italy and of every nation must 
be based — will here be in place. The Catholic 
Church not only affirms the natural order, but 
affirms the natural order as divine. For she has 
ever held the Creator of the universe, of man, 
and the Author of revelation as one, and there- 
fore welcomed cheerfully whatever was found to 
be true, good, and beautiful among all the dif- 
ferent races, peoples, nations, and tribes of man- 
kind. It is for this reason that she has merited 
from those who only see antagonism between God 
and man, between nature and grace, between reve- 
lation and science — who believe that " the heathen 
were devil-begotten and God-forsaken/' and " this 



The Church and the Age, 123 



world a howling wilderness " — the charge of being 
superstitious, idolatrous, and pagan. 

The special mission of the people of Israel by- 
no manner of means sets aside the idea of the di- 
recting care of Divine Providence among the Gen- 
tiles, and the mission of other branches of the 
family of mankind. The heathens, so-called, were 
under the divine dispensation given to the patri- 
arch Noe ; and so that they lived up to the light 
thus received, they were, if in good faith, in the 
way of salvation. The written law given by di- 
vine inspiration to Moses had the same divine 
source as the unwritten law given to Noe and the 
patriarchs, and the patriarchal dispensation was 
the same as that received from God by Adam. 
There is no one rational being ever born of the 
human race who is not in some sort in the cove- 
nanted graces of God. It is the glory of the Ca- 
tholic Church that she exists from the beginning, 
and in some true sense embraces in her fold all 
the members of the human race ; and of her alone 
it can be said with truth that she is Catholic — 
that is, universal both in time and space : replevit 
orb cm t err arum. 

Affirming the natural order and upholding it as 
divine, the Catholic Church did not hesitate to 
recognize the Roman Empire and the established 
governments of the world under paganism, and 



I2 4 



The Church and the Age. 



to inculcate the duty, " Render unto Caesar the 
things that are Caesar's." Hence she willingly ac- 
cepted alliance with the Roman state when Con- 
stantine became a Christian, and approved, but 
with important ameliorations, the Roman code of 
laws ; and of every form of government, whether 
monarchic or democratic, legitimately established 
among the Gentile nations of the past or by non- 
Christian peoples of the present, she acknowledges 
and maintains the divine right. 

The great theologians of the Church, after hav- 
ing eliminated the errors and supplied the deficien- 
cies of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, ac- 
cepted their systems, and the labors of these 
" immortal heathens " have contributed no little 
to the glory of Christianity. It is to the labor of 
Christian monks that the world is indebted for 
what it possesses of the w r ritings of the " heathen " 
poets, moralists, and historians. It was the 
Church's custom to purify the heathen temples by 
her blessing, and transform their noble buildings, 
without altering their structure, into Christian 
temples. It was in the bosom of the Catholic 
populations of Italy that the revival of classical 
literature and art took its rise in modern Europe. 
Notwithstanding the extravagance of some of its 
votaries, which called forth the righteous indigna- 
tion and condemnation of Savonarola, its refining 



The Church and the Age. 1 25 



influence, combined with the wealth due to indus- 
try and commerce, elevated the Italian cities to a 
height of civilization that has not been surpassed, 
if equalled, by the foremost nations of our day. 
The same may be said of other Catholic nations. 
When the ships of Spain covered every sea with 
commerce, and her enterprise broke through the 
confines of the known world and discovered, by 
the guiding genius of Columbus, a new continent ; 
when it was said of Spain that the sun never set 
upon her realms ; when Spain was most product- 
ive of great warriors, great statesmen, great artists, 
and great saints, it was then, and precisely because 
of it, that Spain was most profoundly and devout- 
ly Catholic. 

All the joys that spring from the highest intel- 
lectual and artistic culture, the happiness derived 
from man's domestic and social affections, the 
gratification of the senses in the contemplation 
of the beauties of creation, and the pleasure drawn 
from the fruits of industry and commerce — all 
these, when pure, are not only consistent with, 
but form a part of, the life and worship of the 
Catholic faith. The very last accusation for an 
intelligent man to make against the Catholic 
Church is that she teaches a " non-human " reli- 
gion. 

Nor is Catholicity out of harmony with Ameri- 



126 The Church and the Age. 



can institutions. No political government, at least 
in modern times, has ventured to rely so far upon 
the natural ability of man to govern himself as 
that of the republic of the United States. It 
may be said that the government of this repub- 
lic is founded upon man's natural capacity to 
govern himself as a primary truth or maxim. It 
assumes the dignity of human nature, presupposes 
the value of man's reason, and affirms his natural 
and inalienable rights. 

These were declarations of no new truths, for 
they spring from right reason and the primitive 
instincts of human nature, and belong, therefore, 
to that natural order which had ever been assert- 
ed and defended by the great theologians and 
general councils of the Catholic Church. These 
truths underlie every form of political govern- 
ment founded in Catholic ages, correspond to 
the instincts of the people, and were only op- 
posed by despots, and Protestant theologians ; and 
the erroneous doctrines concerning the natural 
order were brought into vogue by the so-called 
Reformation. 

Our American institutions, in the first place, 
we owe to God, who made us what we are, and 
in the next place to the Catholic Church, which 
ever maintained the natural order, man's ability 
in that order, and his free will. Under God the 



The Church and the Age. 



127 



founders of our institutions owed nothing to Eng- 
lishmen or Dutchmen as Protestants, but owed 
all to the self-evident truths of reason, to man's 
native instincts of liberty, to the noble traditions 
of the human race upheld by God's Church and 
strengthened by the conviction of these truths ; 
their heroic bravery and their stout arms did the 
rest. 

Sincere Catholics are among our foremost pa- 
triotic citizens, and, whatever may befall our 
country, they will not be found among those 
who would divide her into factions, or who would 
contract her liberties, or seek to change the popu- 
lar institutions inherited from our heroic fore- 
fathers. Catholic Americans have so learned their 
religion as to find in it a faithful ally and a firm 
support of both political and civil liberty. No- 
where, on the other hand, does the Catholic 
Church reckon among her members more faith- 
ful, more fervent, and more devoted children 
than in the citizens of our republic. 

If the Latin peoples are backward in things 
relating to their political or material or social 
prosperity, or in any other respect, in the natural 
order, this is not to be laid to the charge of the 
Catholic faith. If the races are not wanting to 
her, the Church will never be wanting to the 
races. 



128 The Church and the Age. 



The Catholic Church is not Dependent on 
any Race. 

It is quite natural that those races which, 
by God's providence, have been intimately con- 
nected with the Church from her cradle should 
be inclined to think that the Church is con- 
fined to their keeping and is inseparable from 
their existence. Christianity is undoubtedly af- 
fected in its development by the peculiarities 
of the races through which it is transmitted, 
and it is natural that they should accentuate 
those truths and bring to the front those features 
of organization which commend themselves most 
to their genius, instincts, and wants. This is only 
stating a general law held as a maxim among 
philosophers : Whatever is received, is received ac- 
cording to the form of the recipient. Thus, the 
contact of the Church with the intellectual gifts 
of the Greeks was the providential occasion of 
the explicit development and dogmatic definition 
of the sublimest mysteries of the Christian reve- 
lation. And through her connection with the 
Latins, whose genius runs in the direction of or- 
ganization and law, the Church perfected her 
hierarchy and brought forth those regulations 
necessary to her existence and well-being known 
under the name of " Canon Law." 



The Chtirch and the Age, 129 

But the objective point of Christianity, the 
Church of Christ, is to embrace in her fold all 
mankind ; she is, in her origin, essence, and in- 
stitution, independent of any human being, or 
race of men, or state, or nation. 

The Italians, or the Spaniards, or the French, 
or any other nation or nations may renounce the 
faith and abandon the Church. England and other 
nations did so in the religious revolution of the 
sixteenth century, yet the Church exists and is 
none the less really and essentially Catholic. The 
Church did at first exist in all her divinity with- 
out including even one nationality or race, and, 
if it please God, can do so again. The sun would 
give forth its light though there were no objects 
within the reach of its rays, the same as when 
they are reflected from all nature and display all 
their beauties ; so the divinity of the Catholic 
Church would exist in all its reality and power 
though there were no Christians to manifest it by 
their saintly lives, the same as at some future day 
when, after the victory over her enemies, she will 
unite in one the whole human race, and all her 
hidden glory will be displayed. 

This law also holds good and is applicable to 
her visible head, the supreme pastor of the faith- 
ful. The pope, as pope, was no less the father 
of the faithful and exercised his jurisdiction when 



130 The Church and the Age. 



driven into the Catacombs, or violently taken by 
a despot and imprisoned at Fontainebleau, or, as 
at present, forced by the action of a desperate 
faction of Italians into retirement in the Vatican, 
than when his independence and authority were 
recognized and sustained by the armies of the 
Emperor Constantine or defended by the sword of 
Charlemagne, the crowned emperor of Christendom. 

"The pope," to adopt the words of Pius IX., 
"will always be the pope, no matter where he 
may be, in his state as he was, to-day in the Vati- 
can, perhaps one day in prison." 

The perpetuity of the Catholic Church is placed 
above and beyond all dangers from any human 
or satanic conspiracies or attacks in that Divinity 
which is inherently incorporated with her ex- 
istence, and in that invincible strength of convic- 
tion which this Divine Presence imparts to the 
souls of all her faithful children. It is this in- 
dwelling Divine Presence of the Holy Spirit which 
from the day of Pentecost teaches and governs 
in her hierarchy, is communicated sacramentally 
to her members, and animates and pervades, in 
so far as not restricted by human defects, the 
whole Church. Hawthorne caught a glimpse of 
this divine internal principle of life of the Ca- 
tholic Church and embodied it in the following 
passage : " If there were," he says, " but angels to 



The Church and the Age. 



work the Catholic Church instead of the very dif- 
ferent class of engineers who now manage its 
cranks and safety-valves, the system would soon 
vindicate the dignity and holiness of its origin." * 
This statement put in plain English would run 
thus : The Catholic Church is the Church of God 
actualized upon earth so far as this is possible, 
human nature being what it is. The indwelling 
Divine Presence is the key to the Catholic posi- 
tion, and they who cannot perceive and appreciate 
this, whatever may be their grasp of intellect or 
the extent of their knowledge, will find themselves 
baffled in attempting to explain her existence and 
history ; their solution, whatever it may be, will 
tax the credulity of intelligent men beyond en- 
durance ; and at the end of all their efforts for 
her overthrow these words from her Founder will 
always stare them in the face : " Non prsevale- 
bunt " — " the gates of hell shall not prevail against 
her." If this language be not understood in plain 
prose, perhaps it may be in its poetical translation : 

M The milk-white hind was fated not to die." 
The radical party now in power in Italy may suc- 
ceed in ruining their glorious country, but they may 
rest assured that this does not include, as her foes, 
in every turn of her eventful history, foolishly and 
stupidly imagine, the ruin of the Catholic Church. 
* Marble Faun y vol. ii. p. 129, Tauch. Ed. 



132 The Church and the Age. 



Nor is it a question as to whether the Church 
will be reconciled with modern civilization. The 
real question is whether modern society will fol- 
low the principles of eternal justice and right, and 
reject false teachers ; whether it will legislate in 
accordance with the rules of right reason and the 
divine truths of Christianity, and turn its back 
upon revolution, anarchy, and atheism ; whether 
it will act in harmony with God's Church in up- 
holding modern civilization and in spreading God's 
kingdom upon earth, or return to paganism, bar- 
barism, and savagery. The question, the real 
question which in the course of human events 
has become at the present moment among the 
Latin race a national question, and particularly so 
in Italy, is this: " Christ or Barabbas ? " " Now, 
Barabbas was a robber." 



External and Internal. 

But a little deeper insight into the relation of 
authority and liberty in Catholic life may assist 
us in studying the Italian difficulty. 

It is folly to attempt to interpret any society 
without having first discovered its animating prin- 
ciple and fairly studied the nature and bearings 
of its organization. How great, then, is the folly 
of those who seem not to have even a suspicion 



The Church and the Age. 133 



that the greatest and grandest and the most last- 
ing of all societies and organizations that the 
world has ever known — the Catholic Church — can 
be fathomed by a hasty glance ! Yet there are 
men well known, and reckoned worthy of repute, 
who bestow more time and pay closer attention 
to gain knowledge of the structure and habits of 
the meanest bug than they deem requisite before 
sitting in judgment on the Church of the living 
God. 

There are men standing high in the public es- 
timation, and some of them deservedly so in other 
respects, who imagine that the decree of the Va- 
tican Council defining the prerogatives of the suc- 
cessor of St. Peter has seriously altered the con- 
stitution of the Catholic Church, when it has done 
nothing more or less than make the common law 
of the Church, whose binding force from universal 
usage and universal reception was admitted, a sta- 
tute law. 

There is a class of men who look upon the 
Catholic Church as a mere piece of mechanism, 
abandoned to the control of a set of priests 
swayed by personal ambition, and whose sole aim 
is to exercise an absolute tyranny over the con- 
sciences of their fellow-Christians ; or as an in- 
stitution still more absurd and vile, for heresy 
and infidelity have in some instances succeeded 



134 The Church and the Age. 



in so blinding men's minds that they do not 
allow the good the Church does as hers, and, stimu- 
lated by malice, lay to her account every con- 
ceivable vice and evil. Christ had to defend 
Himself against the Jews, who accused Him of 
being possessed by a devil ; and is it a wonder 
that His Church should have' to defend herself 
against the charge of misbelievers and unbe- 
lievers as being the synagogue of Satan ? The 
servant is not greater than his master. 

Even Goethe, in spite of his anti-Christian, or 
rather his anti-Protestant, instincts, would have 
saved these men from their fanatical blindness 
and their gross errors by imparting to their 
minds, if they were willing to receive it, a true 
insight into the real character of the Catholic 
Church. " Look," he says, after premising that 
" poems are like stained glasses — " 

" Look into the church from the market square ; 
Nothing but gloom and darkness there ! 
Shrewd Sir Philistine sees things so ; 
Well may he narrow and captious grow 
Who all his life on the outside passes. 

4 4 But come, now, and inside we'll go ! 
Now round the holy chapel gaze ; 
'Tis all one many-colored blaze ; 
Story and emblem, a pictured maze, 
Flash by you : — 'tis a noble show. 
Here feel as sons of God baptized, 
With hearts exalted and surprised ! " * 

* John Dwight's translation. 



The Church and the Age. 135 



The "Philistines" we are speaking of infuse 
into the Catholic Church their own forensic 
spirit, and fancy that she is only a system of 
severe commandments, arbitrary laws, and out- 
ward ceremonies enforced by an externa] and 
absolute authority which, like the old law, places- 
all her children in a state of complete bondage. 
They are blind to the fact that the Catholic 
Church confines her precepts, such is her respect 
for man's liberty, chiefly to the things necessary 
to salvation, leaving all the rest to be complied 
with by each individual Christian as moved by 
the instinct of divine grace.* 

The aim of the Catholic Church is not, as 
they foolishly fancy, to drill her children into a 
servile army of praetorian guards, but to raise up 
freemen in Christ, souls actuated by the Holy 
Spirit — to create saints. 

They are also as ignorant of the nature of 
the authority of the Church as they are of her 
spirit. 

It is the birthright of every member of the 
Catholic Church freely to follow the promptings 
of the Holy Spirit, and the office and aim of 
the authority of the Church is to secure, defend, 
and protect this Christ-given freedom. 

To make more clear this relation of the divine 
* See Sum of St. Thomas, i. 2, cviii. 



136 The Church and the Age. 



external authority of the Church with the di- 
vine internal guidance of the Holy Spirit in the 
soul, a few words of explanation will suffice. 

It is the privilege of every soul born to 
Christ in the waters of regeneration to receive 
thereby the indwelling presence of the Holy 
Spirit. It is the bounden duty of every Christian 
soul to follow with fidelity the promptings of 
the Holy Spirit. In . order that the soul may 
follow faithfully the indwelling Holy Spirit, it 
must be secured against all mistakes and delu- 
sions and protected against all attacks from error. 
Every child of the Church has therefore a claim 
in justice upon the authority of the Church for 
this security and protection. But it would be ab- 
surd and an intolerable indignity for the soul to 
obey an authority that might lead it astray in 
a matter concerning its divine life and future 
destiny ; for in the future world no liberty is left 
for a return to correct the mistakes into which 
the soul may have fallen. Therefore the claim 
is founded in right reason and justice that the 
supreme teaching and governing authority of the 
Church should be divine — that is, unerring. And 
it is the intrusion of human authority in the 
shape of private judgment, or the usurpation of 
the state, as supreme, in regard to the truths of 
divine revelation, that is the radical motive of 



The Church and the Age. 137 



the resistance to Protestantism on the part of 
Catholics. 

Now, when the soul sees that the external au- 
thority is animated by the same divine Spirit, 
with whose interior promptings it is most anxious 
to comply ; when it appreciates that the aim of 
external authority is to keep it from straying 
from the guidance of the indwelling divine Spi- 
rit : then obedience to authority becomes easy, 
and the fulfilment of its commands the source of 
increased joy and greater liberty, not an irksome 
task or a crushing burden. This union of the in- 
ner and outer divine action is the secret source 
of Catholic life ; the inward principle prompts the 
obedience of Catholics to the divine external au- 
thority of the holy Church. From this is born 
the consciousness of the soul's filiation with God, 
whence flows that perfect love and liberty which 
always accompanies this divine Sonship. 

The aim of the authority of the Church and 
its exercise is the same as that of all other autho- 
rity — secondary. The Church herself, in this sense, 
is not an end, but a means to an end. The 
aim of the authority of the Church is the pro- 
motion and the safeguard of the divine action 
of the indwelling Holy Spirit in the soul, and 
not a substitution of itself for this. 

Just as the object of the authority of the state 



138 The Church and the Age. 

is to promote the common good and to protect 
the rights of its citizens, so the authority of the 
Church has for its aim the common good of its 
members and the protection of their rights. And 
is not the patriotic spirit that moves the legisla- 
tor to make the law for the common good and 
protection of his fellow-countrymen identically the 
same spirit which plants in their bosoms the sense 
of submission to the law ? Consequently, to fix 
more firmly and to define more accurately the 
divine authority of the Church in its papal exer- 
cise, seen from the inside, is to increase individ- 
ual action, to open the door to a larger sphere of 
liberty, and to raise man up to his true manhood 
in God. 

It does, indeed, make all the difference in the 
world, as the poet Goethe has so well said, to 
" look at the Church " with " Sir Philistine " in a 
" narrow and captious " spirit from " the market- 
square" standpoint, or to gaze on the Church from 
the inside, where all her divine beauty is display- 
ed and, in a free and lofty spirit, fully enjoyed. 



Italy and the Holy See. 

For the Vatican Council to define the preroga- 
tives of papal authority, and its place and sphere 
of action in the divine autonomy of the Church, 



The Church and the Age. 139 

was to prepare the way for the faithful to fol- 
low with greater safety and freedom the inspira- 
tions of the Holy Spirit, and thus open the door 
wider for a fresh influx of divine life and a more 
vigorous activity. 

The work of the Vatican Council is not, how- 
ever, finished. Other and important tasks are be- 
fore it, to accomplish which it will be sooner or 
later reassembled. Divine Providence appears to 
be shaping events in many ways since the ad- 
journment of the council, so as to render its fu- 
ture labors comparatively easy. There were spe- 
cial causes which made it reasonable that the oc- 
cupant of St. Peter's chair at Rome should in 
modern times be an Italian. Owing to the radi- 
cal changes which have taken place in Europe, 
these causes no longer have the force they once 
had. The Church is a universal, not a national 
society. The boundaries of nations have, to a 
great extent, been obliterated by the marvellous 
inventions of the age. The tendency of mankind 
is, even in spite of itself, to become more and 
more one family, and of nations to become parts 
of one great whole rather than separate entities. 
And even if the wheel of change should, as we 
devoutly hope, restore to the Pope the patri- 
mony of the Church, the claims of any distinct 
nationality to the Chair of Peter will scarcely 



140 The Church and the Age. 



hold as they once held. The Supreme Pastor of 
the whole flock of Christ, as befits the Catholic 
and cosmopolitan spirit of the Church, may now, 
as in former days, be chosen solely in view of his 
capacity, fitness, and personal merits, without any 
regard to his nationality or race. 

It must be added to the other great acts of 
the reigning Pontiff — whom may God preserve! — 
that he has given to the cardinal senate of the 
Church a more representative character by choos^ 
ing for its members a larger number of distin- 
guished men from the different nations of which 
the family of the Church is composed. This, it is 
to be hoped, is only a promise of the no distant 
day when the august senate of the universal 
Church shall not only be open to men of merit 
of every Catholic nation of the earth, but also its 
members be chosen in proportion to the import- 
ance of each community, according to the express 
desire of the (Ecumenical Council of Trent. Such 
a representative body, composed of the elite of the 
entire human race, presided over by the common 
father of all the faithful, would realize as nearly 
as possible that ideal tribunal which enlightened 
statesmen are now looking for, whose office it 
might be to act as the arbitrator between nation 
and nation, and between rulers and people. 

Since the close of the first session of the Vati- 



The Church and the Age. 



141 



can Council nearly all the different nations of 
Europe, including Italy, have, of their own ac- 
cord, broken the concordats made with the Holy- 
See, and virtually proclaimed a divorce between 
the state and the Church. This conduct leaves 
the Church entirely free in the choice of her bish- 
ops ; which will tend to bring out more clearly 
the spiritual and popular side of the Church ; to 
set at naught the charge made against her pre- 
lates of meddling in purely secular affairs ; and 
to wipe out the stigma of their being involved 
in the political intrigues of courts. 

Another providential advantage is the facility 
with which the widely-separated races of men 
may be reached and influenced. Modern inven- 
tions and improvements, such as telegraphs, rail- 
roads, steamships, cheap postage, the press, have 
lent an expansive power of action to men which 
poets, in their boldest flights of fancy, did not 
reach. These things have changed the face of 
the material world and the ways of men in con- 
ducting their secular business. 

Pope Sixtus V. readjusted and improved in his 
day the outward administration of the Church — a 
reform that was greatly- needed — and placed it by 
his practical genius, both for method and efficien- 
cy, far in advance of his times. This same work 
might, in some respects and in view of modern 



142 



The Church and the Age. 



inventions, be done again and with infinite ad- 
vantage to the interests and prosperity of the 
whole Church of God. 

One of the most, if not the most, important of 
the congregations administering the affairs of the 
Church is that De Propaganda Fide. It is the 
centre of missionary enterprises throughout the 
whole extent of the world. No other object can 
be of greater interest to every Catholic heart, no 
branch of the Church's work calls for greater 
practical wisdom, more burning zeal, and more 
energetic efficiency. 

There is, perhaps, no position in the Church, 
after that of the papal chair, so great in import- 
ance, so vast in its influence, so wide in its ac- 
tion, as the one occupied by the cardinal prefect 
of the Propaganda. Could it be placed on a foot- 
ing so as to profit by all the agencies of our day, 
it would be better prepared to enter upon the 
new openings now offered to the missionary zeal 
of the Church in«different parts of the world, and 
become, what it really aims to be, the right arm 
of the Church in the propagation of the faith. 

Who can tell but that one of the results of the 
present crisis in Italy will lead by an overruling 
Providence to an entire renewal of the Church, 
not only in Italy, but throughout the whole 
world? Such a hope was frequently expressed 



The Church and the Age. 143 



by Pius IX., and to prepare the way for it was 
one of the main purposes of assembling the Vati- 
can Council. 



Impending Danger. 

Scarcely anything is more deplorable to the sin- 
cere Christian and true patriot than discord, 
whether real or apparent, between the religious 
convictions and the political aspirations of a peo- 
ple. Such a discord divides men into hostile 
camps, and subjects both religion and the state to 
the greatest danger. Every sacrifice except that 
of principle should be made, every material in- 
terest that does not involve independence and 
existence should be yielded up without reluc- 
tance or delay, in order to put an end to these 
conflicts, unless one would risk on one hand apos- 
tasy and on the other anarchy. 

The discord which has been sown between the 
state and the Church by the revolutionary move- 
ment in Italy has not only excited a violent strug- 
gle in the bosom of every Italian, but has created 
dissension between husband and wife, parents and 
children, brother and brother, friend and friend, 
neighbor and neighbor, and placed different 
classes of society in opposition to each other. 
The actual struggle going on in Italy is working 



144 The Church and the Age. 



every moment untold mischief among the Italian 
people. Already symptoms of apostasy and signs 
of anarchy are manifest. Every day these dangers 
are becoming more menacing. A way out of this 
dead-lock must be speedily found. 

The Church has plainly shown in ages past 
that she can live and gain the empire over souls, 
even against the accumulated power of a hostile 
and persecuting state. She has shown in modern 
times, both in the United States and in England 
and Ireland, that independent of the state, and 
of all other support than the voluntary offerings 
of her children, even with stinted freedom, she can 
maintain her independence, grow strong and pros- 
perous. The Church, relying solely upon God, 
conquered pagan Rome in all its pride of strength, 
and, if needs be> she can enter again into the 
arena, and, stripped of all temporal support, face 
her adversaries and reconquer apostate Rome. 

But who can contemplate without great pain a 
nation, and that nation the Italian, passing through 
apostasy and anarchy, even though this be neces- 
sary, in the opinion of some, as a punishment and 
purification ? Can those who believe so drastic a 
potion is needed to cure a nation give the assur- 
ance that it will not leave it in a feeble and chronic 
state, rendering revival a work of. centuries, and 
perhaps impossible ? Every noble impulse of re-= 



The Church and the Age. 145 



ligion and humanity should combine to avert so 
dire a calamity, and with united voice cry out 
with the prophet: " Is there no balm in Gilead ? 
Is there no physician there ? Why, then, is not the 
wound of the daughter of my people healed?" 

The balm that will cure the present wound in 
Italy is not likely to be found in a closer alliance 
of the Church with the actual state. For the 
state throughout Europe, with scarcely an excep- 
tion, has placed itself in hostility to the Church, 
and to expect help from this quarter would in- 
deed be to hope in vain, and to rivet more closely 
the shackles which bind the free action of her 
members. Is it not the apparent complicity of 
the Church with some of the governments of 
Europe that has been one of the principal causes 
of the loss to a fearful degree of her influence 
with the more numerous class of society, giving 
a pretext for the tirades of the socialists, commu- 
nists, and internationals against her? The Church 
has been unjustly identified, in the minds of many, 
with thrones and dynasties whose acts and policy 
have been as inimical to her interests as to those 
of the people. 

In the present crisis it would be far from wise 
to rely for aid on states, as states now are — whether 
they be monarchies, or aristocracies, or republics, 
or democracies — or upon contending dynasties ; 



146 The Church and the Age. 



the help needed in the actual crisis can come only 
from the Most High. " Society," as Pius IX. once 
observed, " has been enclosed in a labyrinth, out of 
which it will never issue save by the hand of God." 

The prime postulate of a sound Catholic is 
this : The Church is divine, moved by the instinct 
of the Holy Spirit in all her supreme and vital 
acts. The Catholic who does not hold this as 
a firm and immovable basis has lost, or never had, 
the true conception of the Church, and is in im- 
mediate danger of becoming a rebel and a here- 
tic, if he be not one already. Whoso fails to re- 
cognize this permanent divine action in the Church, 
the light of the Holy Spirit has departed from 
his soul, and he becomes thereby external to 
the Church. Of this truth De Lamennais, Dol- 
linger, Loyson, are modern and sad examples. 
Instead of seeking a deeper insight into the na- 
ture of the Church, and drawing from thence 
the light and the strength to labor for the renewal 
of Christianity and the unity of Christendom, 
they became blinded by passion and deluded by 
personal conceits, and have fallen into heresy 
and sectarianism. For the Divine Spirit embodied 
in the Church and the Divine Spirit indwelling in 
every Christian soul are one and the same Divine 
Spirit, and they bear testimony to each other, and 
work together for the same end. 



V. 

THE CHURCH AND FRANCE, 



OUR purpose in this article is not to confine 
the attention of our readers to the affairs 
of France, nor have we the design of narrating 
the successive events which brought about the 
present state of things in that nation ; but we 
wish to offer a view of the principles involved in 
the struggle and their bearing on the great inte- 
rests of Europe in general, actual and prospec- 
tive. 

The transformation that has taken place in the 
nations of Europe, the expansion of their narrow 
lines of policy into broader political principles, 
has been so rapid and powerful that its force in 
our day has passed beyond all possible human 
control. These principles have become profound 
convictions, and for not heeding them the peo- 
ple of France dethroned Charles X. and Louis 
Philippe ; and had Henry V. been placed upon the 
throne of France with the intention of attempt- 
ing to restore the ancient regime, it would have 

147 



148 The Church and the Age. 



been as vain, even though he should have had 
Marshal MacMahon and the army at his com- 
mand to back him, as an effort to stem and 
throw back the mighty torrents that pour their 
waters over the precipice of Niagara. 

The tendency of modern society to a political 
equality, without distinction of the privileges of 
birth or rank, has its root in the spirit of Christi- 
anity. The Catholic Church, in this sense, is the 
most democratic institution that has ever existed 
upon this earth. There is no barrier in the path 
of its humblest member to become its chief in 
power and dignity. It is not seldom, too, that 
those who have risen from the lowest walk in 
life have been elected to this high position. 

The spirit of an age, rightly interpreted, is the 
breath of the Almighty stirring within men's 
souls, which finds its utterance in their voices, 
even in spite of themselves; and it is plain to 
impartial observers that God's will in this age is 
to lead men to serve Him in a spirit of rational 
liberty. Nowhere has the Catholic Church been 
given such fair play, though this is yet imperfect, 
as in the democratic republic of the United States. 
This fact has been recognized by the supreme pas- 
tors of the faithful, Pius IX. and Leo XIII. , and 
again and again they have called the attention of 
the world to it. 



The Church and the Age. 149 



France had the opportunity under the presi- 
dency of Marshal MacMahon, if she had only 
known how to profit by it, of forming a political 
government adapted to the genius and character 
of her people and in harmony with her present 
wants and future greatness; to govern herself, if 
she wished it, independently of an emperor or an 
hereditary monarch ; and this task will be yet ac- 
complished, unless hindered by that enemy of all 
rational liberty — a destructive radicalism. 



Two Movements in the World. 

There have been from the beginning only two 
fundamental movements in this world, and these 
are becoming in Europe more and more distinct, 
powerful, and antagonistic. The one has its 
source in the Catholic Church, which is the con- 
crete form of the direct action of God on society 
in view of man's true destiny. The other con- 
sists in rebellion against this divine action, and 
finds on earth its headquarters and expression in 
heresies, in despotisms, and, more particularly in 
recent days — at least in Europe — in organized 
secret societies. 



150 The Church and the Age. 



First Movement. 

The order and stability of modern society and 
civilization are based upon the truths which find 
their root and support in the doctrines unswerv- 
ingly taught and uncompromisingly upheld by the 
Catholic Church. Among these great truths are 
the divinity of Christ and the divine establish- 
ment and perpetuity of his Church upon earth ; 
the unquestionable responsibility of both kings and 
peoples to the law of God ; the indissolubility of 
the marriage tie and the sacredness of the family ; 
the reign of the law of justice between man and 
man, and, when violated, the strict obligation of 
restitution ; the sacredness of oaths and the equality 
of all men, without distinction of rank, color, or 
race, before God. By the undeviating application 
of these and other great first-truths of divine reve- 
lation and of human reason, at the cost of the 
lives of millions of her children ; by withstand- 
ing the fierce attacks of the barbarians of the 
northern forests of Europe ; by her contest with 
Mahomet and his followers ; and by her resistance 
to the errors and vices of her inconsistent and 
disobedient children, the Catholic Church, instinct 
with divine life, formed the conscience of modern 
society, founded the nations of Europe, united 
them in a universal commonwealth called Christen- 



The Church and the Age. 151 

dom, established the reign of God in men's souls 
upon earth, as preliminary to the kingdom of 
"heaven hereafter. 

Such has been the work of the first movement. 



Second Movement. 

All heresies, all despotisms, all anti-social secret 
societies have this postulate in common : that the 
overthrow of the Catholic Church is a sine qua non 
to their attaining ultimate success. Hence there is 
an instinctive and unanimous sympathy among 
their adherents whenever there is an attack aimed 
against the Catholic Church — an unmistakable 
sign of their common origin and an unquestion- 
able proof of their parentage. Peoples distin- 
guished for their profession of universal tolera- 
tion and championship of the right of every indi- 
vidual to the enjoyment of his own religious 
convictions will applaud to the skies the violation 
of these principles, provided the persecuted be 
only Catholics ! Every right guaranteed by con- 
stitutional law, every principle of divine and hu- 
man justice, may be trampled under foot — yea, 
with sympathy and applause — provided those who 
do so are animated with hatred for the Catholic 



152 The Church and the Age. 



Church ! Witness the public sympathy, both in 
England and the United States, with the war of 
imprisonments, fines, and banishments waged but a 
few years ago against Catholics, with murderous in- 
tent against their Church, by the " iron and blood " 
chancellor of the Hohenzollern Empire; witness. the 
confiscations and sacrilegious spoliations by the 
crew of infidels of Italy, led by a Mancini, against 
the Church ; witness the banishment of all the Ca- 
tholic priests without exception from its district, in 
violation of the federal constitution, by the canton 
of Berne, and the robbery of the churches built 
by the sacrifices of loyal Catholics, which are given 
over to the use of a rebellious and insignificant 
faction by the authorities of the Swiss so-called 
republic ; witness, to come nearer home, the assas- 
sination, by the agents of secret societies, of the 
President of Equador, and, within a few weeks after, 
the poisoning of the Archbishop of Quito at the 
altar ! There was none to raise a voice, not to 
say a cry of horror or indignation, among these 
sticklers for liberty and justice, in condemnation 
of this wholesale tyranny, these cruel persecutions, 
and this secret and deadly violence. This is 
well known by the atheists, who aim at the ruin 
of all Christian institutions : that to delude a 
large class in these so-called liberty-loving coun- 
tries, and gain their sympathy, material aid, and 



The Church and the Age. 153 



the use and support of their press, all that is 
required to make them run like an enraged bull 
at a red rag is to shout lustily, " Ultramontanism ! " 
" Vaticanism ! 9% " Popery ! " 

The present crisis in France is fraught with her 
deliverance as well as that of Europe from the most 
desperate and wide-spread organized conspiracy 
that has ever existed in the world. They fail to 
interpret public events rightly and to discern the 
signs of the times who take it to mean anything 
less than the saving of Christianity and modern civ- 
ilization in Europe. 

" Let order die ! 

Let one spirit of the first-born Cain 
Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set 
On bloody courses, the rude scene may end 
And darkness be the burier of the dead." 

Such is their aim, and it is also their undisguised 
and outspoken word; for these men "know not how 
to blush." 

And these are the chief characteristics of the sec- 
ond movement. 



The Result of the Battle. 

This movement in its weak beginnings in France, 
regarding only impending dangers to the state, will 



154 The Church and the Age. 



not exhaust itself until it has restored the Catholic 
Church to her normal position in Europe. This 
final result is no more intended by the leaders of 
the movement than it was the design of the Allied 
Powers to restore the Papacy at the downfall of the 
first Napoleon. It is a divine law that man acts, 
but God directs. 

" There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
Rough-hew them how we will." 

There is, then, this increasing purpose running 
through the history of God's dealing with the hu- 
man race : to bring into clearer light the divine 
character of His Church, His spouse, rendering it less 
and less possible for men to recognize His existence 
and not be Christians, and, being Christians, not to 
be Catholics. This is the key of universal history. 



Errors of Modern Philosophy. 

Europe for the past century has been in the state 
of transition to a new epoch — a renewal of Catholi- 
city. This statement is in flat contradiction with 
the assertions of some modern thinkers who claim 
the title of philosophers. They would have us be- 
lieve that religious motives are exhausted ; or, as 
they term it, " theological motives," which is the 



The Church and the Age. 155 

same thing, for theology is nothing else than the 
scientific statement of religion. This is equivalent 
to saying that human nature is exhausted; for reli- 
gion is what lies deepest in human nature, and con- 
sequently all other motives will be exhausted be- 
fore those of religion. 

Religion is of the very essence of man's nature, 
for it springs from the intellectual sense of his en- 
tire dependence for existence on an absolute cause. 
Religion is, in its last analysis, reason's recognition 
of God and man's fulfilment of his relations to 
God. Religion and reason are, therefore, correla- 
tive. 

Men who pretend that religious motives have 
ceased to have a strong hold upon human nature 
labor under a complete hallucination. Can they 
fancy that those faculties through which God acts 
on the soul, and which bring the soul in contact 
with God, have by some strange freak suddenly be- 
come defunct? That religious motives to an almost 
incredible extent have become extinct in some 
men's souls we, with pain and pity, admit ; that this 
is the case with the bulk of mankind is an egre- 
gious mistake. There has seldom been an age 
when religious questions occupied so large a share 
of intellectual attention as our own ; and religious 
motives still influence the bulk of mankind in their 
conduct. 



156 The Church and the Age. 



It is too true, however, that a class of men have 
fatally succeeded, by a false education and an erro- 
neous philosophy, in paralyzing the action of the 
noblest faculties of the soul ; but this disease is 
confined to a small class. Deluded men ! they 
would have the rest of mankind to esteem their 
degradation as a privilege and count their shame 
an honor. 

The second form in which the symptoms of this 
malady manifest themselves is the eschewing of the 
first principles of sound logic. As according to 
our philosophy, " God is a provisionary idea," or is 
" man's intuition of himself projected into space," 
or is " the creation of a wish " — so runs their prem- 
ise ; and as the religious faculties of the soul have 
become extinct, therefore they cry : " God is ex- 
tinct," " the soul's immortality is a fable," and 
" religion is a worn-out superstition " ! 

The eternal God is, and in Him is all that lives, 
moves, and exists, and His providence directs all 
things to the end for which He called them into 
existence. 

God is not ousted from His creation as easily as 
these ambitious philosophers, who are so ready to 
occupy His place in the universe, would have the 
world believe. 

The mistake of a class of speculative thinkers 
consists in regarding the state of transition of soci- 



The Church and the Age. 157 



ety from one epoch to another — in interpreting a 
phase of religion — as the change and vanishing of 
the indestructible elements of all religion. 

A certain class of truths suits one age, awakens 
the greatest enthusiasm and profoundest devotion, 
and in another epoch falls almost dead upon the 
ears of men and hardly calls forth an audible re- 
sponse. Epochs differ from epochs in their aspira- 
tions and instincts, like those of individuals ; and 
this is a law of the providential education and 
growth of the human race. One race of men dif- 
fers from another in its capacity to seize hold of, 
appreciate, and give the proper expression to cer- 
tain truths, and in turn is brought to the front ranks 
in the providential march of humanity. And this 
is the intention of the Author of the human family. 
Men of the same race differ also greatly from each 
other; for in the wide universe there are no two 
things in all respects precisely alike, and in this is 
seen displayed God's infinite creative power. 

These separate epochs, this variety of races, and 
these differences among men afford to Christianity 
the opportunities and means of giving expression to 
♦ the great truths contained in all religions of which 
she is the only adequate representation. For Chris- 
tianity is the synthesis of all the scattered truths 
of every form of religion which has existed from the 
beginning of the world, and the Catholic Church 



158 



The Chicrch and the Age. 



is Christianity's complete organic, living form. 
Christianity is the abstract expression of the Cath- 
olic Church, which, in the successive centuries of 
her existence, has come in contact with every race 
of men, and has known how to Christianize and 
retain them in her fold in harmony with their 
natural instincts. She has met humanity in every 
stage of its development, from the intellectual and 
refined Greek to the man-eating savage, and, by 
working on the foundations of nature, she has cap- 
tivated them to the easy yoke of Christ. The 
Catholic Church alone has known how to supply 
the defects or human nature and correct its vices 
while allowing it to give free play to its instincts 
and to retain the charm of its native originality ; 
and this has been effected, not by a superior human 
sagacity or a preternatural craft, as sophists would 
make the world believe, but because in her dwells 
that Divine Spirit which breathed into man's nos- 
trils the breath of life, and made him a living, 
rational, immortal soul, and in whom he lives, moves, 
and has his being. 

God is not extinct nor are religious motives effete. 
The mistake of these theorizers consists in suppos- 
ing that the present is the finality of Christianity, 
whereas the hand of God is opening the way by pu- 
rifying His Church, by directing the movements of 
nations and the issues of the world, to the end that 



The Church and the Age. 



*59 



she may shape the coming future beyond all past 
experience in her progressive approach to the per- 
fect realization of her Divine Ideal. 

" An age comes on, which came three times of old, 
When the enfeebled nations shall stand still 
To be by Christian science shaped at will." 



A New United Christendom. 

Do intelligent Christians appreciate the import of 
the questions which engage and agitate the active 
intellect of their contemporaries ? Are they sensi- 
ble of the weight of their responsibilities, and ready 
to lift their minds and hearts to the grandeur of the 
mission of the age in which their lot is cast? 

He who can see things as they are throughout 
the world where the Christian faith has spread, and 
appreciate them rightly, cannot help seeing that a 
fresh unfolding of the great design of Christianity 
in all its simplicity, vastness, and splendor, and a 
stricter application of its principles in the several 
spheres of life, are alone adequate to meet all the 
genuine aspirations and satisfy the honest demands 
of this age. 

The attack is against fhe primary truths of rea- 
son no less than the essential truths of divine reve- 



160 The Church and the Age. 

lation, and the defence, to be adequate and victo- 
rious, must at least be equal to the attack. Thus 
the law of reaction is forcing upon the leading 
Christian minds a reaffirmation of natural and re- 
vealed truths with a completeness and a force which 
the world has not up to this time witnessed. There • 
can be no compromise with the false principles of 
atheists in religion, revolutionists in the state, and 
anarchists in society. Their errors must be refuted 
and their movements counteracted. The positive 
side of truth must be brought out and clothed in 
all its beauty. The true picture must be presented 
and contrasted with the false, so as to captivate the 
intelligence and enlist the enthusiasm of the active 
minds of the youth of the age. This is the great 
work that, in the economy of God, is mainly left to 
the initiative of individual minds among the mem- 
bers of His Church. It is the work of Catholic 
genius illuminated by the light and guided by 
the interior inspirations of the Holy Spirit. The 
Church, in every critical or important epoch in her 
history, has always given birth to providential men ; 
such were Gregory, Augustine, Benedict, Bernard, 
Francis, Dominic, Neri, Ignatius, Vincent of Paul. 
As in the past, so in the present, a new phase of 
the Church will be presented to the world — one 
that will reveal more clearly and completely her 
divine character. 



The Church and the Age. 161 



The reintegration into general principles of the 
scattered truths contained in the religious, social, 
and political sects and parties of our day would re- 
veal to all upright souls their own ideal more clearly 
and completely, and at the same time present to 
them the practical measures and force necessary to 
its realization. By this process sects and parties 
would become as far as possible extinct — not by 
way of antagonism, but by the power of assimila- 
tion and attraction. Just as the lesser magnet is 
drawn to the greater by cords of attraction identi- 
cal with its own, only more intense, more powerful 
and all-embracing, so the fragmentary truths con- 
tained in error, when reintegrated in their general 
principles, will be drawn to them and their division 
disappear. Christianity once more will be perfect 
in one, and, uniting its forces for the conversion of 
the world, will direct humanity as one man to its 
divine destination. 



The Kingdom of God on Earth. 

Is not such a consummation the answer to the de- 
vout aspiration of all sincere Christian souls ? Is it 
not also the promise of Christianity, and was it not 
the object of the most earnest prayer of its Foun- 



162 The Church and the Age. 

der when upon earth? The Son of God did not 
pray in vain. 

Underneath all the errors and evils found among 
men.of all times is the prime desire for the know- 
ledge of the true and the native hunger for the 
good. Now, the absolute truth which contains all 
truth, and the absolute good which contains the 
supreme good, is God. God is therefore the ideal 
of the rational soul, the term of all its seeking, and 
the end of all its wishes. The perfect union of the 
soul with God is bliss. 

Again, Christianity does not confine itself to the 
reign of God in the soul ; it seeks to establish the 
reign of God upon earth. "Thy kingdom come; 
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, ,, was 
the petition of Christ to His heavenly Father. His 
life was not confined to contemplation and preach- 
ing; He "went about doing good." 

Genuine contemplation and action are insepa- 
rable. He who sees truth loves truth, and he who 
loves truth seeks to spread the knowledge and the 
practice of truth. Divine love is infinitely active, 
and, when it has entered the human heart and has 
set it on fire, it pushes man to all outward perfec- 
tion and visible justice. No men have labored so 
zealously and so efficiently for their fellow-men, for 
the establishment of God's kingdom upon earth, as 
the saints of God. 



The Church and the Age. 163 



The love of God and the love of man are one. 
God promises His reward not to the ignorant, or to 
the indolent, or to the indifferent, but to those who 
visit the prisoner, feed the hungry, give drink to the 
thirsty, clothe the naked — to the doing of good 
works as the evidence of the true faith. 

The Catholic Church teaches to men their true 
relations to God and to their fellow-men, and by 
the practical application of the principles which 
govern these relations are removed the errors and 
vices which hinder the establishment of the reign of 
God in men's souls and everywhere upon earth. The 
history of civilization since the moment of the 
Church's institution on the day of Pentecost is 
nothing else than a record of the several steps of 
progress of society, under the guidance of the 
Catholic Church, in reaching this goal. Whatever 
elements the nineteenth century possesses superior 
to Judaism, paganism, barbarism, and lslamism are 
due to the uninterrupted action of Christ upon the 
world through the Catholic Church. Modern civili- 
zation may be defined as the result of nineteen cen- 
turies of action of the Holy Spirit dwelling in the 
Catholic Church, establishing the reign of God in 
men's souls and the kingdom of heaven upon earth. 
" God is now taking the dross out of the crucible, 
so as to render His people free from all alloy, and 
once more to clothe the Church for which our Lord - 



164 The Church and the Age. 



delivered Himself up with beauty resplendent with 
glory. And when God shall have accomplished 
this He will remove the rod of His justice from the 
Church, and, that His divine name may no longer be 
blasphemed, He will give her victory, a victory far 
more brilliant than her sufferings have been terri- 
ble. May this triumph not be delayed!"* 

The Catholic Church places no gulf between 
God and humanity, or divorce between heaven 
and earth, or antagonism between revelation and 
reason, or religion and science; and she repudiates 
the doctrine which emphasizes faith at the ex- 
pense of good works. Hence the accusation of 
modern infidels against Christianity, as confining 
itself exclusively to man's happiness hereafter — 
" a post-mortem happiness " — while ignoring his 
actual, present good — " ante-mortem happiness " — 
may have 3ome show of reason as against Protes- 
tant sects, especially the Calvinistic sect ; but it is 
altogether false when made against the Catholic 
Church. 

It is through the faithful reception of the di- 
vine action of the Catholic Church by individuals 
and society that the highest good possible for 
man here and hereafter can be surely attained ; 
and this needs only clearly to be seen to restore 
to her true and visible fold all the descendants of 

♦Letter of Pope Pius IX. to Mgr. Lachat, April 27, 1876. 



The Church and the Age. 165 



the members separated from the Catholic Church 
by the religious revolution of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, at least all who are in good faith. 

And it is the bringing out into a clearer light 
the divine side of the Church, and to the front 
those truths which eliminate the errors rife in our 
day and their stricter application to present evils, 
that, by the instinct of the Holy Spirit, now pre- 
occupies the active, intelligent mind of Catholics 
throughout the world, especially in countries where 
the dangers are most imminent, such as France, 
Germany, and Italy. 



Promises, False and True. 

There are two controlling forces, explain their 
origin as we may, visible in the conflicting move- 
ments of human affairs in this world. The one 
places man in possession of the Supreme Good, 
and makes him a co-worker with his Creator in the 
realization of the ideal for which God called this 
great universe into existence. The other is insti- 
gated by the enemy of God and the human race, 
seeking by false promises to lead man astray. 

" You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil," 
was Satan's promise to our first parents. This 
promise contained w r hat was desirable for man ; 



i66 



The Church and the Age. 



God had implanted in the human soul the aspira- 
tion for its fulfilment. But what the enemy pro- 
mised he had not the power to perform, and the 
road that he pointed out as leading to the fulfil- 
ment of the promise led in a wrong direction. 

The right answer of our first parents to Satan 
would have been : " We know that God has made 
our souls in His own image and likeness, and that 
we shall be made participators of His Divine Na- 
ture, and thereby deified ; and as our Creator has 
endowed us with the gift of intelligence, we shall 
also gain the knowledge of good and evil — for 
this is its proper object. And we know also with 
certitude that we shall gain these great rewards 
by following the paths which God has pointed 
out to us." Had they thus spoken, they would 
have, in the strength of their innocence and con- 
scious rectitude, added : " Begone, tempter ! Thou 
art a liar ; for what thou dost promise it is not 
thine to give ; and instead of wishing our elevation, 
thou seekest to accomplish our fall and utter 
ruin ! 

As in the beginning, so now, Satan seizes hold 
of the noblest aspirations of the soul, and, by de- 
ceiving men under the guise of a real good, leads 
them quite astray. For what underlies the pro- 
mises of Protestantism and its innumerable sects ; 
and rationalism, so-called, and its different phases ; 



The Church and the Age. 



167 



and the secularists, positivists, scientists, atheists, 
religious radicals, materialists, spiritists, revolution- 
ists, evolutionists, socialists, pessimists, free-reli- 
gionists, communists, internationalists, optimists, 
theists, nihilists, kidtiirkampfer, agnostics, intuition- 
ists, transcendentalists, and other sects and parties 
too numerous to mention — for their name is legion, 
and their confusion of tongues is as great as that of 
Babel — what underlies their promises is in one as- 
pect true and in a sense desirable. The right an- 
swer to all their fine promises is this : " You affirm 
some undoubted truths and you hold out a desirable 
good ; but the way that you point out for realiz- 
ing the one and attaining the other is subversive 
of all truth and the supreme good, and it will not 
reach even what you aim at, but end in entire dis- 
appointment and anarchy. Put together the frag- 
mentary truths affirmed by each of your different 
religious sects, and you will find them all contain- 
ed in Catholicity. Make a list of all the honest 
demands for ameliorations and reforms in man's 
social, industrial, and political condition — it will 
not be a short one — and you will discover that 
they have their truth in the spirit, and are justi- 
fied by the teachings and the practice, of the Ca- 
tholic Church/' O sincere seeker after truth ! 
did you but know it, the path lies open before 
you to a perennial fountain of truth, where you 



i68 



The Church and the Age. 



can slake to the full that thirst which has so long 
tormented your soul. O sincere lover of your 
fellow-men ! there is a living body which you may 
enter and co-operate with, whose divine action is 
realizing a heavenly vision for the whole human 
race, brighter and more beautiful than the ideal 
which so often haunts your lonely dreams ! 



Conclusion. 

The phase of Catholicity which is now coming 
slowly to the light will gather up all the rich trea- 
sures of the past, march in response to every 
honest demand of the interests of the actual 
present, and guide the genuine aspirations of the 
race in the sure way to the more perfect future of 
its hopes. 

This sublime mission is not the self-imposed 
work of any man or party of men, but the di- 
vinely-imposed task of religion, of the present, 
visible, living body of Christ, the Church of 
God. None other has the power to renew the 
world, unite together in one band the whole 
human race, and direct its energies to enterprises 
worthy of man's great destiny. Legitimists, im- 
perialists, Orleanists, republicans, anti-republi- 
cans—these parties in France may contribute 



The Church and the Age. 169 



more or less as instruments to the initiation of 
the new order of things in Europe, but that 
is all. They will betray the cause of God and 
the interests of humanity, if they should at- 
tempt to turn it to any individual account or to 
any partisan triumph, w r hether called religious or 
political. The enemies of the Church may place 
hindrances in her way, but they cannot stop her 
in reaching her goal. God alone rules and reigns. 

Strange destiny that of France, to be the lead- 
er of Europe both for good and for evil ! France 
was the first nation converted to Christianity in 
western Europe, and the first to proclaim her- 
self, as a nation, infidel. France, let us trust, 
will be the first to recover from her errors and 
give the initial blow that will end in the over- 
throw of the enemies of modern civilization and 
Christianity. 



VI. 

ST. CATHERINE OF GENOA. 



HE publication of the Life of St. Catherine 
of Genoa at this moment is, for several 
reasons, opportune. 

The reading of it will correct the misconcep- 
tions of many who honestly fancy that the Ca- 
tholic Church encourages a mechanical piety, 
fixes the attention of the soul almost, if not al- 
together, on outward observances, and inculcates 
nothing beyond a complete submission to her ex- 
ternal authority and discipline. 

The life of our Saint is an example of the re- > 
verse of that picture. It makes clear the truth 
that the immediate guide of the Christian soul is 
the Holy Spirit ; for it was her uncommon fidelity 
to the aspirations of the Holy Spirit that made 

this holy woman worthy of being numbered by 

170 




The Church and the Age. 



171 



the Church among that class of her most cher- 
ished children who have attained the highest de- 
gree of divine love which it is possible for human 
beings to reach upon earth. 

The mistake of the persons above spoken of 
arises from their failing to see that the indwelling 
Holy Spirit is the divine life of the Church, and 
that her Sacraments have for their end to convey 
the Holy Spirit to the soul. It arises also from 
their not sufficiently appreciating the necessity of 
the authority and discipline of the Church, as 
safeguards to the soul from being led astray from 
the paths of the Holy Spirit. 

Without doubt God could have, if He had so 
pleased, saved and sanctified the souls of men in 
spite of their ignorance, perversity, and weakness, 
by the immediate communication and action of 
the Holy Spirit in their souls, independently of 
an external organization like the Church. But 
such was not His pleasure, or His plan. For His 
own wise reasons He chose to establish a Church, 
which He authorized to teach the world whatso- 
ever He had commanded, which He promised to 
be with unto the end of all time, whose ministry, 
sacraments, and government should serve Him, as 
had His body, to continue and complete, by a 
visible means, the work of man's redemption. 

Hence it is an entirely false view of the nature 



172 The Church and the Age. 

and design of the Church to suppose that it was 
intended to be, or is in its action, or ever was, or 
ever can be, a substitute for the authority of 
Christ, or the immediate guidance of the Holy 
Spirit in the Christian soul. 

The authority of the Church is no other than 
the authority of Christ, as He Himself has de- 
clared, " He that heareth you, heareth Me." * The 
sacraments are nothing else than the channels, or 
visible means, of communicating the Holy Spirit 
to the soul. It is the divine action in the Church 
which gives to its external organization the prin- 
cipal reason for its existence. 

And it is equally false, and at the same time 
absurd, to suppose for a moment that the Holy 
Spirit indwelling in the Church and embodied in 
her visible authority, and the same Holy Spirit 
dwelling in and inspiring the Christian souls, 
should ever contradict each other or come into 
collision. Whenever, by supposition, such colli- 
sion takes place, be assured it is not the worloof 
the Holy Spirit, but the consequence of ignorance, 
error, or perversity on the part of the individual ; 
for it must not be forgotten, or ever be lost sight of, 
that it pleased Christ our Lord to promise, not to 
each individual Christian but to His Church, that 
" the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."f 

* St. Luke x. 16. f St « Matthew xvi. 18. 



The Church and the Age. 173 



The sincerity of the Christian soul in following 
the inspirations of the Holy Spirit will be shown, 
in case of uncertainty, by its prompt obedience to 
the voice of the Holy Church. It is only when 
the soul goes astray from the paths of the Holy 
Spirit it finds trammels to its feet ; otherwise it 
is conscious of perfect liberty in the Church of 
God. 

From the foregoing truths the following prac- 
tical rule of safe-conduct can be drawn. The 
immediate guide of the soul to salvation and 
sanctification is the Holy Spirit, and the criterion 
or test that the soul is guided by the Holy 
Spirit is its ready obedience to the authority of 
the Church. With this rule there can be no dan- 
ger of going astray, and the soul can walk in ab- 
solute security, in the ways of sanctity. 

This is the way in which all the saints have 
trod to arrive at Christian perfection, but no life 
illustrates this truth more plainly, so far as we 
are aware, than the life of our saint. 

But there is another difficulty solved by the 
holy life of St. Catherine; for there are some 
who think that the Church fosters a sanctity 
which is not concerned with this present life, 
rendering one useless to society and indifferent 
to the great needs of humanity. 

The love of God and the love of ona's neigh- 



i 74 The Church and the Age. 



bor, as taught by Christ and His Apostles, are 
essentially one. If the saints of the Church were 
distinguished for their great love for God, they 
ought therefore to be equally distinguished for 
their great love for mankind. The one is the test 
of the other. If any man say, " I love God, and 
hateth his neighbor, he is a liar." Such is the 
emphatic language of St. John.* 

Let us apply this test with the history of the 
Church and the biographies of her saints in our 
hands. Take, for example, the religious orders: 
it is a fair field, for nearly all of them were 
founded by saints, whose special aim it was to 
teach and practise Christian perfection, as under- 
stood by the Catholic Church. What do the his- 
tory and biography of the religious orders teach 
us? All that we possess of the classics, and of 
literature in every department, pagan as well as 
Christian, prior to the invention of the art of 
printing, we owe exclusively to the industry and 
labor of the early monks. Not a slight service. 
These men were for the most part the founders 
and professors of the great universities and col- 
leges in England, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, 
and Ireland. The last were not the least, for the 
monks of Ireland were famous as founders of 
colleges and seats of learning in their own as 
* I Ep. St. John. 



The Church and the Age. 175 



well as in foreign countries. Monks were the 
pioneers in agriculture, and in many industrial 
and mechanical arts, while their monasteries be- 
came the centres of great cities, many of which 
still retain their names. They were the sowers 
of those seeds whose fruits, developed by time, 
men of our day claim under the title of " modern 
civilization " ! 

" Idle monks and nuns" were they? They 
were, as a class, men and women who ate and 
drank less, worked harder, and did more for intel- 
lectual progress, civilization, and social well-being 
than any other body of men and women whose 
record can be found on the pages of history, or 
who can be pointed out in this nineteenth cen- 
tury! 

As for their works of mercy, such is and has 
been their superabundance that it is difficult to 
know where to begin and how to leave off in 
reading their records. 

The brotherhoods and sisterhoods in the 
Church, devoted to the care and relief of the sick, 
the orphan, the aged, the poor, the captive, the 
prisoner, the insane, and the other victims of 
the thousand-and-one ills that human nature is 
heir to, as well as of those which are self-inflicted 
— who can count them ? 

True, there were some religious orders which were 



176 The Church and the Age. 



given almost exclusively to contemplation, but 
these were exceptional vocations, and were so con- 
sidered by the Church. These had also a most im- 
portant social bearing and practical value, which, 
however, this is not the place to demonstrate. But 
the great majority of her saints were men and 
women whose hearts were overflowing with warm 
and active sympathy for their race, consecrating 
their energies to its improvement spiritually, intel- 
lectually, morally, and bodily, and not seldom lay- 
ing down their lives for its sake. 

That the Church did not compel all her children, 
seeking Christian perfection, into one uniform type, 
is true. Governed by that divine wisdom which 
made man differ from man in his talents and apti- 
tudes, she did not attempt to mar and wrong their 
hature, but sought to elevate and sanctify each in 
his own peculiar individuality. 

Read the life of St. Catherine, and in imagi- 
nation fancy her in the city hospital of Genoa, 
charged not only with the supervision and respon- 
sibility of its finances, but also overseeing the care 
of its sick inmates, taking an active, personal part 
in its duties as one of its nurses, and conducting 
the whole establishment with strict economy, per- 
fect order, and the tenderest care and love ! Fancy 
this for a moment in the city hospital of Genoa in 
the sixteenth century, and seek for her compeer in 



The Church and the Age. 177 



the city of New York, or in any other city in the 
world, in our day, and if you find one, and outside 
of the Catholic Church, then, but not till then, you 
may repeat to your heart's content that she fosters 
a sanctity which turns one's attention altogether 
away from this world, and makes one indifferent to 
the wants of humanity. 

St. Catherine's life teaches another lesson to 
those whose mental eyes are not closed to facts as 
plain as the sun when shining at noonday. 

We hear much said, and not a little is written, in 
the United States and in England, about the exclu- 
sion of woman from spheres of action for which 
her natural aptitudes make her equal, and in many 
cases render her superior, to man ; of her partial 
education, and in many cases the inferior position 
which she is forced to accept in society. 

Strange that we hear no such complaints in Cath- 
olic society or from Catholic women ! Is it be- 
cause they have been taught to hug the chains 
which make them slaves ? or that they are denied 
liberty of speech? or that their lips are closed by 
arbitrary authority? Not at all. The reason is 
plain. Women, no less than men, are free to oc- 
cupy any position whose duties and functions 
they have the intelligence or aptitude to fulfil. 
They have the opportunities and are free to ob- 
tain the highest education their capacities are 



178 



The Church and the Age. 



capable of. This every Catholic woman knows 
and feels, and hence the absence of all conscious- 
ness, in the Church, of being deprived of her 
rights, of oppression and of injustice. 

One has but to open his eyes and read the 
pages of ecclesiastical history to be convinced 
that in the Catholic Church there has been no 
lack of freedom of action for women. Look for 
a moment at the countless number of sister- 
hoods in the Church. Some count their members 
by thousands, all under the government of one 
head, a woman, and elected by themselves for 
life ; others, again, each house forming a separate 
organization, with a superior of its own, elected 
for a limited period. In fact, there is no form 
of organization and government of which they 
do not give us an example, and carried on suc- 
cessfully, showing a practical ability in this field 
of action which no one can call in question. 
Then there is no kind of labor, literary, scien- 
tific, mechanical, as well as charitable, in which 
they may not engage, according to their abilities 
and strength. Who shall enumerate the differ- 
ent kinds of literary institutions, schools, and 
academies under their direction, and confessedly 
superior in their kind ? Who shall count the 
hospitals, the orphanages, the reformatories, the 
insane asylums, and other similar institutions, 



The Church and the Age. 179 



where they have proved their capacity to be 
above that of men ? All roads in the Church 
are open to woman's energies and capacities, and 
she knows and is conscious of this freedom ; 
and, what is more, she is equally aware that 
whatever she has ability to do will receive 
from the Church encouragement, sanction, and 
that honor which is due to her labor, her devo- 
tion, and her genius. 

Few great undertakings in the Church have 
been conceived and carried on to success with- 
out the co-operation, in some shape, of women. 
The great majority of her saints are of their sex, 
and they are honored and placed on her altars 
equally with men. It is not an unheard-of 
event that women, by their scientific and literary 
attainments, have won from Catholic universities 
the title of doctor. St. Teresa is represented 
as an authorized teacher, with a pen in hand, and 
with a doctor's cap. It would carry us alto- 
gether too far beyond our limits to show how 
largely the writings of women in the Church 
have contributed to the body and the perfec- 
tion of the science of theology. 

In this respect, also, our saint was distinguish- 
ed. Her spiritual dialogues and her treatise on 
purgatory have been recognized, by those com- 
petent to judge in such matters, as masterpieces 



180 The Church and the Age. 



in spiritual literature. St. Francis of Sales, 
that great master in spiritual life, in whose city 
we have the consolation of writing, was accus- 
tomed to read the latter twice a year. Freder- 
ick Schlegel, who was the first to translate St. 
Catherine's dialogues into German, regarded them 
as seldom if ever equalled in beauty of style ; 
and such has been the effect of the example 
of Christian perfection in our saint * that even 
the "American Tract Society" could not resist 
its attraction, and published a short sketch of 
her life among its tracts, with the title of her 
name by marriage, Catherine Adorno. 

It was fitting that the life of St. Catherine 
of Genoa should be translated for the first time 
into English by one who is now no more, but 
who was, while living, distinguished, like our 
saint, for her intellectual gifts, for her charity 
toward the poor and the abandoned, and in con- 
secrating her pen to the cause and the glory of 
God's Church. 



VII. 



CATHOLICITY AND THE TENDEN- 
CIES OF THE AGE. 



IT is an obvious fact that a considerable 
number of minds in our day have been 
trained in scientific studies and are devoted to 
intellectual pursuits. It is equally evident that 
the general diffusion of education will enlarge 
the circle of this class of persons and extend 
their influence. And it is quite natural that 
minds so trained, when their attention is turned 
to the study of religion, should look for its pre- 
sentation under scientific forms. This expecta- 
tion is not to be censured or thwarted ; on the 
contrary, it should be met with due consideration 
and fairly satisfied. For the claim which Chris- 
tianity lays upon man is that of a " reasonable 
service," and, unless it can make this demand 
good in the court of reason, it must lose its hold 
upon his intelligence, cease to exert its influence 
upon society, and give up the idea of ever win- 
ning the homage of the whole human race. 

tit 



182 



The Church and the Age. 



And it was precisely this scientific presentation 
of Christianity with the aid of philosophy that 
was aimed at, and in great part achieved, by the 
Schoolmen. " For it is due to the service of phi- 
losophy that sacred theology take up and enrich 
itself with the nature, habit, and genius of a true 
science." * Before their day positive theology, 
which consisted in proving the divinity of Chris- 
tianity by the authority of the inspired Scriptures 
and the words of Christ delivered to His apostles 
and handed down from generation to genera- 
tion in His Church with the testimony of the 
Fathers, had received its completion. This pre- 
pared the way for the Schoolmen, who added to 
the arguments of positive theology those drawn 
from philosophy. Philosophy, as held by them, 
consisted in those truths which had been " dis- 
covered with the sole light of natural reason by 
the eminent thinkers of the past," especially by 
their prince, Aristotle, who reduced these truths 
into a system, but not unmixed with most serious, 
not to say appalling, errors. St. Thomas, the 
prince of the Schoolmen, with the aid derived 
from the writings of his precursors, especially of 
St. Dionysius the Areopagite, St. Augustine, Boe- 
thius, St. Anselm, Blessed Albert the Great his 
master, and above all from the light of his 
* Leo XIII., Encyclical JEterni Patris. 



The Church and the Age. 183 



own incomparable and sanctified genius, eliminated 
these errors, and at the same time modified, en- 
larged, and enriched with his own ideas the 
boundaries and scope of, philosophy. 

The aim of the Schoolmen was to produce, by 
the full play of the light of natural reason on the 
intellectual side of Christianity, aided by philoso- 
phy and consistently w r ith positive theology, a 
strictly logical demonstration of Christianity. The 
great task which they had before them was that 
of the synthesis of natural and revealed truth, of 
science and faith. But there came a halt in the 
march of this intellectual progress. 

In the early part of the sixteenth century ear- 
nest and zealous efforts were made by sincere 
churchmen to reform the evils and extirpate the 
abuses existing in the Church, more especially in 
Germany. By certain leaders whose passions 
swayed their judgments, combined with temporal 
princes who made use of these to gain despotic 
power, this most praiseworthy movement was 
turned from that of reform into one of heresy, 
schism, and revolution. Seized with the insane 
idea of destroying the Church which Christ had 
built, they conspired together and organized a sys- 
tematic opposition, protesting defiantly against her 
doctrines, and rudely overturning, wherever they 
succeeded in gaining the power, what she had 



184 The Church and the Age. 



with great difficulty reared and with greater sacri- 
fices sustained. 

Consistently with the fundamental principle of 
their system of confining the attention exclusively 
to the Bible, and the interpretation of its texts 
by the sole light of the internal illumination of 
the Holy Spirit, they denied the value of human 
reason, contemned philosophy, opposed the spread 
of education and the study of the liberal arts 
and sciences, burnt up or sold as waste paper 
precious manuscripts, depopulated the schools and 
universities, and shattered to pieces, wherever 
they came within their reach, all works of art. 

Hence Melanchthon, the learned scholar, imbued 
with this fanaticism, abandoned his studies, ap- 
prenticed himself to a baker in order not to 
distract his attention with human learning from 
the internal workings of the Holy Spirit. Every 
ignorant peasant might consistently entertain the 
fancy that he was called to be a preacher of the 
Gospel — as many did — and that he was even all 
the better fitted to become a preacher of the Gos- 
pel by very reason of his crass ignorance. This 
original characteristic trait of contempt for all hu- 
man learning and culture survives here and there 
among Protestant sects even to our own day, more 
notably among the Society of Friends, the Meth- 
odists, and the Plymouth Brethren. This reaction 



The Church and the Age. 185 



against intellectual activity and denial of progress 
properly named itself Protestantism. 

It has taken the greater part of three centuries 
for the body of those who have been infected by 
this contagion to throw off its effects, and to 
regain their intellectual and moral health suffi- 
ciently to walk again erect. This state of con- 
valescence upon which the better part of the 
descendants of original Protestantism have en- 
tered has taken place by the intellect slowly as- 
similating those truths which the leaders of this 
secession from the Church denied, and in rejecting 
their principal errors. For the intellect, according 
to its own laws, as Sir Thomas teaches, seeks 
truth, assimilates it when found, and has a natural 
abhorrence of error, and, when once detected, re- 
jects it. Thus the Protestantism of the nine- 
teenth century, or what goes now pretty much by 
that name, is the reverse of the Protestantism of 
the sixteenth century. 

The process of this transformation has been 
somewhat as follows : The truths of divine reve- 
lation and of human reason against which a pro- 
test was made in the beginning, have been placed 
in such a clear light by long and frequent discus- 
sion that further controversy about them in our 
day is hardly possible. Where will you find an 
intelligent man among Protestants who could be 



1 86 The Church and the Age. 

induced to repeat Martin Luther's diatribes against 
human reason ? or against man's free-will ? or 
against human nature ? How many Presbyterians 
of this generation hold and believe the five points 
of Calvinism pure and simple? The same might 
be said with equal truth of Episcopalians and 
the Thirty-nine Articles of Anglicanism. Very 
few among Protestants of this century take the 
pains to read their creeds, and those who do, 
and get an idea of their contents, either clam- 
or for their change or would smile at the sim- 
plicity of one who seriously asked whether they 
believed in them. Even the human sciences ap- 
pear to have had for their mission, especially 
since their revival in our times, to undermine 
the positions assumed by Protestantism in its 
attacks on the Catholic Church, and the drift 
of their real discoveries harmonizes w r ith Cath- 
olic philosophy and theology.* This confirms the 
truth of the teaching of St. Thomas, who says 
that " the study of creation tends to .the de- 
struction of error and the fortifying of the 
truths of divine faith." f Every forward step in 
the sciences is a conquest of truth, and as the 
supernatural finds its confirmation in the natural, 

* Those of our readers who would follow this train of thought 
we advise to read the volume entitled Contemporary Evolution, 
by St. George Mivart. 

\ Contra Gentiles, lib. ii. c. ii., iii. 



f 

The Church and the Age. 187 



so every advance in the natural sciences is a new 
conquest of Catholicity over heresy. It is from 
this point of view we can fully appreciate the 
affirmation v of Leo XIII., that " Christ is the 
Restorer of the sciences." * 

So thoroughly have the principal errors of Pro- 
testantism been exposed that few, if any, can be 
found who could witness without impatience and 
disgust the killing for the hundredth time these 
u extinct Satans." Old issues are abandoned, the 
Protestantism of creeds lies at deaths door, and 
those of the next generation who have not be- 
come Catholics, if they can still be called Protes- 
tants, may perhaps retain a general respect for 
the Christian religion, but little beyond that. 

Even unbelievers frankly acknowledge : " Grant- 
ing that God Almighty came upon earth to found 
a religious system, they would be at loss to make 
out where such a system is to be found, if not 
in the Church of Rome." f Others who fancy 
that they are emancipated from the Christian 
faith, occupying themselves with the futile at- 
tempt to impeach Christianity with ideals bor- 
rowed unwittingly from its stores, publicly confess 
that once you concede the Messianic idea — an- 
other phrase for the divinity of Christ — the Cath- 
olic Church is undoubtedly the complete embodi- 

* Encyc. JEterni Patris. f Westminster Review », July, 1872. 



J 88 The Church and the Age. 



ment and exponent of the Christian religion. 
The fact has become plain at last that Protes- 
tantism affords no longer any shelter for thorough- 
ly intelligent and upright men to call themselves 
Christians or to escape becoming Catholics. 

Seeing this has compelled certain refractory and 
self-sufficient persons to make the attempt to in- 
vent a new religion as a substitute for Christian- 
ity ; while, with keener insight, another class 
proclaims the utter hopelessness, not to say ridi- 
culousness, of the sporadic efforts of these de- 
luded men to accomplish their self-imposed task, 
and, recognizing the fact that there is no real 
alternative between the Catholic Church and athe- 
ism, they openly avow themselves atheists. 

These, however, compose but a small number ; 
the larger part of the body of Protestants have 
a more healthy tone, which is indicated by their 
willingness to listen to the genuine voice of rea- 
son, their enthusiasm for the general diffusion of 
education and their sacrifices in favor of the 
higher branches of studies, their love for the fine 
arts and pursuit of the natural sciences, their in- 
stinctive attachment to liberty and desire for pro- 
gress — these, and other signs of the same nature, 
are all proofs of the early stages of recovery of 
that intellectual and moral activity which is the 
true standard of man's normal health. Therefore, 



The Church and the Age. 189 

to all whose eyes are not blurred and whose ears 
are not deaf, it is plain that the main tendencies 
of the times in which we live are moving the 
souls of men with increased rapidity and grow- 
ing harmony towards the great truths of the 
Catholic faith. 

Is not this interpretation of the signs of the 
times in accordance with the intention and signifi- 
cance of the invitation of the reigning pontiff, 
Leo XIII., to the Catholic world to turn its at- 
tention to the study of the Schoolmen, espe- 
cially St. Thomas, with the view of completing, 
with the assistance of all our modern scientific 
resources, the noble work of the evolution on ra- 
tional principles of the truths of the Catholic 
faith ? 

Pius IX. fearlessly placed before the eyes of the 
world the evil tendencies of the age, at the same 
time condemning its errors and vices, in the hope 
of saving society from being plunged into an un- 
fathomable abyss. Leo XIII., his worthy suc- 
cessor, has been given, let us hope, the more 
consoling mission of pointing out to the world 
the good tendencies of the age, interpreting its 
truths and virtues in that light which will make 
the way clear to society of a loftier and better 
future. 

The whole drift of the foregoing might be 



190 The Chtirch and the Age. 



summed up in these words : If an exposition of 
the Catholic religion were made, following the ef- 
forts of the Schoolmen, especially St. Thomas, 
profiting at the same time by the knowledge, dis- 
coveries, and experience since acquired, in the 
light of such a presentment the prejudices against 
the Catholic faith would disappear, its beauty 
would find unbidden entrance into the hearts of 
men, the religious revolution of the sixteenth cen- 
tury would be reversed, and humanity as one man 
would advance with rapid strides to bring down 
the kingdom of heaven upon earth, and, in so 
doing, fit itself for its loftier and ampler destiny 
above. 

Assuming, then, the fact, which many among 
themselves frankly acknowledge, that Protestant- 
ism as an organized opposition to the Catholic 
Church has spent its main strength, and as an 
adequate representation of Christianity is an 
utter failure, is doomed to disappear, and is dis- 
appearing rapidly ; assuming that in the eyes of 
intelligent men the efforts to invent or construct 
a new religion are unworthy a moment of serious 
thought ; and granting that " the problem of 
problems of this hour" is, as Mr. Tyndall has 
put it in his Bristol address, " how to yield the 
religious sentiment reasonable satisfaction," the 
question then immediately before us is this : 



The Church and the Age. 



191 



What prospect is there that the Catholic religion 
will solve this problem of problems? 

This is the question with which we started 
out, and insisted on being frankly met and fairly 
answered. Religion, Christianity, the Catholic 
Church — which is Christianity in its unity and 
totality in a concrete form — has for its actual 
task to answer satisfactorily the intellectual de- 
mands of the age, and to perceive its opportuni- 
ties in modern civilization and its onward ten- 
dencies. 

The Catholic Church, so far from shrinking from 
this precise problem and these imperative de- 
mands, hails them with inmost delight. She is 
not only ready to face them fearlessly, but, con- 
scious of the indwelling divinity and the posses- 
sion of divine truth, she looks upon this problem 
and these demands as the very opportunities pre- 
pared by her Divine Spouse to secure, by her sat- 
isfactory solution and answers, a new and glori- 
ous triumph. 

This is what we shall now attempt to show. 

Here at the outset we are met with an objec- 
tion: Your vital dogma is obedience to the 
pope. Authority is your main reliance for mov- 
ing men's hearts and illuminating their minds. 
How, then, can you expect by such means to 
bring home the difficult truths and practices of 



192 



The Church and the Age. 



Christianity to the souls of men born and jred in 
the freedom of this age? In answer we affirm that 
this objection is owing to distorted ideas and 
wrong opinions current among Protestants con- 
cerning the doctrines, the sacraments, the worship, 
and the discipline of the Catholic Church, and 
from a misconception of the history of the 
Church since the Reformation. Comte de Mais- 
tre, in his usual emphatic stvJe, did not hesitate 
to characterize the history written during these 
three last centuries as a general conspiracy 
against truth. There is no doubt that this accusa- 
tion is to a great extent just. But is not this 
falsification due, in some measure at least, to the 
fact that in an age of active religious controversy 
one is apt to fix his attention upon those truths 
or virtues which are in dispute, even to the exclu- 
sion of others equally important and perhaps more 
essential, but which are not contested? The for- 
mer are quite naturally, in the heat of the contest, 
unduly accentuated ; and the latter quite left out 
of sight and, it would appear, almost forgotten. 
Occasion is thus given to narrow-minded and un- 
fair opponents to select these contested points, 
forge from them a caricature, and impose, with a 
certain show of learning, this monster of their 
own imagination upon the ignorant as the Catholic 
Church. These controversialists play the part 



The Church and the Age. 193 



in ecclesiastical matters which the Trollopes and 
Dickenses did in their one-sided descriptions of our 
people and in their estimate of our popular insti- 
tutions, and the best that can be said of them is 
that they fed the prejudices of their countrymen 
and for a short time relieved their spleen by afford- 
ing them a little merriment. 

It is not from the knowledge of her true char- 
acter that the Catholic religion suffers in the minds 
of a large portion of the non-Catholic community, 
but from the false impressions which they have re- 
ceived. But the crisis of the fever of controversy 
is passing away, a change is coming over people's 
minds, and there is reason to hope that if the 
Catholic religion were presented to their attention 
without exaggerations, and in the light of its real 
character, the more impartial and intelligent minds 
would assimilate this knowledge. At least, the 
experiment is worth trying, and for our purpose 
we will take up the objection above referred to, 
which may be called the root of the relieious 
controversy of these last three centuries — the 
burning question of authority. 

The impression has been made on the minds of 
no inconsiderable portion of the non-Catholic com- 
munity that the Catholic religion is one based ex- 
clusively upon an external authority which finds 
its absolute expression in the commands of the 



1 » 

194 The Church and the Age. 



pope ; and if obedience is not the sole virtue of 
a good Catholic, it is at least the one above all 
others put in practice by the Catholic system. 
And it may be asked : Have not learned authors 
and distinguished controversialists given counte- 
nance to this false impression by fixing their at- 
tention wholly, it would seem, upon the* evils of 
rebellion against the authority of the Church of 
Christ, as is shown by their declaration that the 
essence of religion, of Christianity, of Catholicity 
is authority ; and in the assertion that on becom- 
ing Catholic one has to make an entire surrender, 
in religious matters, of his personal liberty and his 
own will ; and much more in the same strain ? 

But there is much to be said in extenuation 
of, if not justification for, thus presenting Chris- 
tianity under the exclusive form of an external 
authority ; for a wise strategist makes his point 
of defence that against which the attacks of the 
enemy are mainly directed. Now, the attacks of 
the enemies of the Church for the last three hun- 
dred years were aimed against all external author- 
ity in religion, even though divinely appointed ; 
hence the reason for strenuously insisting upon and 
emphasizing the necessity of authority. It might 
also be said, further, that when an exaggerated or 
false idea of liberty has penetrated into the minds 
of a numerous class of men, loosened the bonds 



The Church and the Age. 195 



which held them together in society, excited dis- 
turbances, and caused revolutions, it behooves the 
friends of order, progress, and civilization to drive 
home the conviction of the necessity of authority, 
to define and concentrate its powers, to insist 
upon the practice of the virtue of obedience and 
make it conspicuous. To all this it may be added, 
in favor of external authority and obedience, that 
there are individuals, and even the larger portion 
of the human race perhaps — certainly this applies 
to some races — whose highest contentment in re- 
ligion, and, as for that, in their social and political 
relations, is not so much from convictions arising 
from intrinsic evidence as in the exercise of obedi- 
ence to an external authority. The knowledge of 
truth and their duty is never conveyed to the 
minds of these individuals or races of men so 
satisfactorily as when under the form of an ex- 
ternal authority whose claims commend them- 
selves to their intelligence, and which is venerable 
by its great antiquity. How perfect must be their 
satisfaction in finding themselves in possession of 
a religion like the Catholic, which unites in itself 
all the authorities of past centuries and all the 
ancient traditions of the human race from its 
cradle ! 

Finally, what was more natural than the appeal 
made to the external authority of the Holy Scrip- 



196 The Church and the Age. 



tures ? — the validity of which both parties in the 
controversy that we are now treating accepted, 
and therefore it seemed to them the shortest and 
best way of settling their disputes. 

But, granting the worthiness of motives, the 
grievous evils flowing from disobedience, and the 
suitableness of presenting Christianity to a people 
of certain characteristics under the form of ex- 
ternal authority, it may well be asked, Is not a 
different method necessary when face to face with 
race-traits of an opposite kind ? 

Those who represent the Catholic religion main- 
ly from the point of view of authority appear not 
to be aware of the fact that there is a large 
class of men, not to say whole nations and races 
of men, who are sensitive, over-sensitive perhaps, 
to the exercise of any authority outside of them- 
selves in religious matters, or, as for that, in any 
matters whatsoever ; men who are instinctively 
inclined to look upon every act of such an au- 
thority, legitimate or not, as an attack upon their 
personal liberty, to which they are irresistibly 
attached ; men who are inclined to think that 
that religion which relies chiefly, if not solely, 
upon its authority must teach doctrines contrary to 
reason and proclaim precepts repugnant to the 
best impulses of our nature, or why, they ask, does 
it require the force of an external authority to im- 



The Church and the Age. 197 



pose these upon our acceptance ? — finally, men 
who, if compelled to make a choice, would a thou- 
sand times rather suffer fiom the license of liberty 
than the despotism of authority. 

When theologians or ecclesiastical authors ven- 
ture to treat of Christianity as to its essence or 
nature, and aim at presenting it to a people unlike 
their own, they should bear in mind what are 
its real constitutive principles, and be careful not 
to employ language that is open to an interpre- 
tation the reverse of their real meaning. To de- 
clare, then, that the essence of Christianity is au- 
thority, and on becoming a Christian one must 
entirely surrender his personal liberty and his own 
will, is a great mistake, and, w T e were about to 
say, an unpardonable one. For whatever attrac- 
tions authority may have in the eyes of a large 
portion of mankind, however absurd it may be to 
attack an authority directly and divinely appointed, 
and however great may be the evils of rebellion, 
no provocation should lead one in his defence of 
Christianity, or in his zeal for its propagation, to 
present it in so one-sided an aspect. 

It is an error, and a gross one, to declare that 
the essence of Christianity is authority. It is no 
such thing. Authority never was and never can 
be the essence of anything, much less the es- 
sence of the highest and best of all things — 



198 The Church and the Age. 

religion. The essence of Christianity in its relation 
to man is the elevation of rational creatures, by the 
power of the Holy Spirit, to a union with God above 
that which they enjoy by their birth. Thus religion 
communicates to man's soul the indwelling Holy 
Spirit, who superadds to the relation man received 
from his Maker in the act of creation one that 
makes him a participator in the divine nature and 
which transforms him from a creature into a child 
of God. 

Authority is always secondary to something else 
as its end, and never an end in itself. Hence au- 
thority may be defined in its most general sense as 
a power subservient to the end for which men are 
associated together. Thus parental authority is 
subservient to the proper rearing and education of 
children. Political authority is subservient to the 
securing of the general welfare of a people. The 
authority of the Church is subservient to the at- 
tainment of the end for which the Christian religion 
was revealed — that is, the promotion and safeguard 
of the action of the indwelling Holy Spirit by which 
the soul is united to God. Therefore it may be laid 
down as an axiom of Christianity that the outward 
authority of the Church effaces itself in a direct ra- 
tio to the action of the Holy Spirit within the soul.* 

* This is but another way of enunciating St. Augustine's well-known 
maxim, Ama Deum et fac quod vis. 



The Church and the Age. 199 



As to the assertion that in accepting the invi- 
tation of the Church to become a Catholic one 
must, in religious matters, make an entire surren- 
der of his personal liberty and his own will, this 
sentence requires no little explanation to under- 
stand whatever truth it may contain ; and it is 
not quite certain that a correct meaning can be 
attached to it — certainly not as it stands. 

" Personal liberty and one's own will" constitute 
an essential part of our nature, and these faculties 
are not ours to surrender, if such a surrender 
were possible or desirable. Were this act in 
man's power it> would then be possible for him 
to annihilate himself. Again, this act of surren- 
der always supposes the persistent action of the 
faculties surrendered ; a surrender of this sort is 
therefore as impossible as it is absurd. Once 
more, personal liberty and one's own will consti- 
tute man a rational, responsible being, and an 
invitation to a surrender of them is an insult 
offered to manhood and dignity, and ought to be 
treated as such. Catholicity, which is the name 
for concrete Christianity, makes no such impossi- 
ble, absurd, and degrading invitation to men. Her 
martyrs, rather than make such a surrender, vol- 
untarily underwent the cruellest torments and 
cheerfully suffered the most ignominious deaths. 

Christianity violates no law of our being, asks 



200 The Church and the Age. 



no surrender of our faculties, and is in perfect 
harmony with all the genuine instincts of our 
nature. Christianity is truth, and invites men to 
exercise their faculties in search after truth, and, 
when found, to follow the truth and emancipate 
themselves from all servitude. "You shall know 
the truth," so runs the Master's promise, "and the 
truth shall make you free." This is Catholicity, 
and such, too, is its explication by St. Thomas.* 

Were we to clothe the invitation of the Cath- 
olic Church to men of this age with words, it 
would run somewhat thus : O men, prone by 
nature to seek knowledge ! seek earnestly to 
know, and to know all things visible and invisible, 
above all the Sovereign Truth, to the uttermost 
of your faculties, for it is unto this end your 
Creator bestowed them upon you. Exert your 
will to gain all the good possible in every order 
of being, above all the Supreme Good ; your ap- 
petites and aspirations were given for no other 
end. Maintain your personal liberty, cost what it 
may ; the cost cannot be too great to preserve 
such a divine treasure. God does not ask of 
you to surrender your nature or its faculties, for 
these are fresh from His hands; but to "go on 
with the same limbs that clad you at your birth 
to blessedness." 

^ £ «3ni3d x '>*SuMma;i^2 y <m. cvtijV WKi. Y^i U\r>\ inrr iVJ 



The Church and the Age. 



20I 



We see in history how the different eras of the 
Church were characterized by special adaptations of 
divine truth and by the practice of particular vir- 
tues. To be a Christian in the ages of persecution 
was equivalent, in most cases, to martyrdom ; subse- 
quently, in order to keep one's self pure and un- 
spotted from the world, the deserts were peopled 
with Christians ; but as persecution ceased and pa- 
gan society was transformed by Christianity, so the 
prominence of martyrdom and retirement from the 
world ceased to characterize the Christian life. 
Unquestionably there are epochs whose preva- 
lent errors and vices require of Christians the 
practice of special virtues to counteract them 
and to be faithful to God and their consciences, 
and the practice of these virtues at times even 
to an heroic degree. But it would be a misap- 
prehension of the true idea of Christianity, and 
a misplaced zeal, to insist upon the practice, for 
instance, of poverty or that of blind obedience, as 
it is called, or any other of the lesser Christian 
virtues, as necessary to salvation for all Christians 
and in all times, or even as the exclusively 
proper form and adequate exhibition of Christian 
perfection. 

No one can dispute that the Holy Spirit in- 
spires a number of souls to give themselves to 
the preaching of the particular truths and the 



202 The Church and the Age, 



practice of the particular virtues necessary to 
counteract the errors and vices of certain epochs. 
These favored souls do great service to the Church 
of God both by their zeal and their example 
to the faithful ; the history of the different re- 
ligious orders from the early ages of Christianity, 
approved and sanctioned by the Church, places 
this beyond doubt. It is no less true that reli- 
gious perfection is an integral part of the eter- 
nal Gospel of Jesus Christ ; but religious institu- 
tions and their peculiar forms of acquiring this 
perfection are adapted to the peculiar needs of 
their times and other special circumstances. When 
they have answered the principal needs which 
called them forth they still continue to exist, and 
to be serviceable in many ways, but not as the 
most active and efficient agents of the Church 
for meeting the pressing wants of the hour. The 
Church alone is the immortal bride of Christ ; but 
she brings forth at every period children like 
giants ready to run their course. Herein lies the 
secret of the succession of her eminent pontiffs, 
her founders of great religious orders, and her 
saints both men and women. 

But it may be asked: Does not the invitation 
of the Gospel require of all men who would enter 
into eternal life to surrender the perversion of their 
personal liberty and to renounce what is called 



The Church and the Age. 203 



their self -will? Most assuredly it does, and this 
will be found written on almost every page of 
the Gospels. If this be your meaning, why not 
use language that will convey your thought to 
those whom you address? The time has come 
to use words in their truest sense, and he who 
would gain the men of this generation must ad- 
dress their intelligence, acknowledge their liberty, 
and respect their dignity. 

May not the pushing forward external authority, 
often when quite out of place, be one of the principal 
causes why there exists in the non-Catholic com- 
munity such a wide-spread sympathy, both open 
and secret, for every attempt at resistance to ec- 
clesiastical authority? A specific prolonged be- 
yond reason may produce a worse disease than 
the one removed, and end in killing the patient. 
May not the prominence given to the practice 
of obedience, forcing it, so to speak, to cover 
ground which it cannot occupy or defend, have 
contributed in part to that spiritual mediocrity 
among the faithful concerning which there is so 
common a complaint ? Men, to be strong, robust, 
and active, need food that is not lacking in nu- 
trition. All honor,' indeed, to the champions of 
truth without whose heroic labors its victory over 
error would not have been, humanly speaking, 
achieved ! Thanks to their resistance to the at- 



204 The Church and the Age. 

tacks of error, truths and virtues of great im- 
portance, and which otherwise would have lain 
latent, have been brought to the front. It is 
principally owing to their zeal that the way has 
been opened for the Church to return to her 
accustomed orbit, and to enter upon a course 
which will be characterized by spontaneity, ex- 
pansion, individual initiative, and energetic action. 
But the mission of vanquishing heresy and re- 
bellion was of its nature a transitory one, and a 
wise physician diminishes both the size and the fre- 
quency of his doses when the patient is in a state 
of convalescence, and recommends a more generous 
diet. 

Let us now suppose, as the smoke of the suc- 
cessful battle with heresy vanishes from the field, 
that the truths brought forth so conspicuously 
in this conflict were properly adjusted, like the 
one we have taken as an illustration, and we 
shall perceive what is meant by the resumption 
and completion of the great task of the School- 
men. If this were accomplished, and the Catholic 
Church were seen in the light of such a fair pre- 
sentment, the false impressions and the prejudices 
springing from them would ' disappear from the 
minds of men as the mist yields before the light of 
the rising sun ; their intelligence would seize hold 
instinctively of its divine truths, and mankind, 



The Church and the Age. 



205 



lifted as it were by one wave of intelligence 
and joy, would pursue with happier zeal its great 
end. 

Nor is this a pleasant word-picture drawn by 
effort of the imagination ; it is the representation 
of the Catholic Church in her true light, and, as 
a proof of its truth and reality, we dare appeal 
to the unanimous testimony and to the conscious- 
ness of all well-informed Catholics. It was in this 
light St. Augustine, that lofty genius, beheld the 
Catholic Church when he exclaimed : " Too late 
have I known thee, O ancient truth ! Too late 
have I loved thee, O beauty ancient and ever 
new ! " 

Let him, therefore, who would serve the Ca- 
tholic Church in this generation, show her in her 
own true light, in her unity and universality, in 
all her beauty and majesty. It is this true vis- 
ion of her divinity that will captivate man's in- 
telligence, secure the unbidden homage of his 
will, and elicit his most heroic devotedness. 
Herein lies the mysterious force of her duration 
for so many centuries, the secret of the power 
of her sway over more than two hundred mil- 
lions of souls, and the reason for the never- 
broken stream of her converts and the capture 
of the ablest and noblest minds of our century. 

Let us once more resume and close. If the 



206 



The Church and the Age. 



interior and intelligible side of the Church were 
exposed to view in such a light that men would 
be led to see clearly and appreciate her essential 
character; if it were shown unmistakably that all 
her externals, when not abused or exaggerated, 
are strictly subservient to the securing of her 
essential end — union of the soul with God — there 
are better and stronger reasons to hope for a 
tide to set in towards her fold in the nineteenth 
century than there was to leave it in the six- 
teenth. For such a movement has in its favor 
the aim and power of the Holy Spirit, the no- 
blest aspiration of man's soul — that for common 
brotherhood — and the operation of that law of 
unity which reigns throughout all creation. 

The providence of God in the course of events 
appears to be preparing for such a movement 
by lifting the Church out of the cradle of that 
race which has served her from her infancy, and 
in breaking the swathing bands of princes which 
protected her tender limbs, in order to clothe 
His divine spouse with the vesture of youth, and 
to place her in all her attractiveness before the 
eyes of men, so that in beholding her divine 
beauty they may be carried away with joy and 
delight. The same Providence is so directing the 
issues of the world, the movements of nations, 
the intellectual, moral, social, and political needs 



The Church and the Age. 207 



of society, that the necessity of her divine ac- 
tion and aid is seen more and more plainly and 
felt more keenly ; while, on the other hand, the 
enemy of mankind, in spite of himself, is driv- 
ing those who will not be moved by higher 
motives, by their fears of common dangers, un- 
less they are atheists or anarchists, into the fold 
of the Church. 

As to Catholics, the controversies of the day will 
invite them to the scientific statement of their faith, 
for only the intelligent grasp of the truth in its 
entireness is adequate to meet the formidable at- 
tacks and conquer the numerous errors of our 
age. Catholics are left no choice. They must 
either raise up their thoughts and courage above 
race and nation, and to the height of the aims of 
Christianity as the absolute and universal religion 
destined to gain the entire world, or cease to 
be Catholics, and content themselves to take 
the ignoble part of one among the thousand dif- 
ferent religious sects, and with them finally dis- 
appear and be forgotten. 

But such a supposition is a sin against the 
idea of a Divine Providence, a denial of the 
divinity of Christianity, and is infidelity to the 
best instincts of our nature. Our hearts are 
therefore lifted upward, and our hopes are on- 
ward ; for the great Church which civilized and 



2o8 The Church and the Age. 



Christianized Europe, formed its people into na- 
tions, and into one great Christian family prop- 
erly named Christendom, is fully competent to 
do the same work, and with greater ease con- 
sidering modern facilities and appliances Her 
disposal, for the whole world. 



..>a\ 'J.J( 1)1 ti; <DlKVvlJiJ D'J-Hi JlOID ! J. 

ijiii, b^xiftvia doidw d3iud3 hvsr^ odl to) ; busw 

i 



VIII. 



THE EXPERIMENT OF PROTEST- 
ANTISM. 



«^ ' HE celebration of the fourth centennial of 
\Ztr Luther's birth-day is a noteworthy event. 
Especially noteworthy, since the enterprise of 
substituting another foundation for that upon 
which Christ Himself had placed His Gospel, 
begun at the Diet of Worms by Dr. Martin 
Luther, has proven an unsuccessful experiment. 
For it is evident now to the whole world that 
the faith of his followers in Christianity grows 
fainter and fainter. This is conspicuously true of 
the children of the cradle of Protestantism, his own 
countrymen, who are notorious for their indiffer- 
ence to Christianity. There is scarcely any one 
doctrine held as of Christian faith by the father 

of the Reformation that his offspring have not re- 

209 



2io The Church and the Age. 



pudiated, or are not prepared to repudiate on 
the first convenient occasion. They treat Luther's 
doctrines with the same courtesy with which he 
treated the doctrines of the. Catholic Church. 
The more active intellect of Protestantism every- 
where to-day questions not so much this or that 
doctrine of Christianity as why they are Christians 
at all ! They are for the most part convinced 
that Protestant principles furnish no solid reasons 
why they should be Christians. There are so- 
called orthodox Protestant sects which are willing 
to receive as members of their churches persons 
who make no profession of any doctrines of a 
distinctive Christian character whatever. 

Thinking and religious men who feel an un- 
controllable reluctance to give up the Christian 
religion begin to ask if it be not necessary to 
defend its divine claims on Catholic principles. 
Not a few of this class, finding, on mature in- 
vestigation, this to be the fact, reverse the re- 
ligious revolutionary movement of the sixteenth 
century by becoming Catholic. The alternative 
now staring intelligent Protestants in the face is this : 
either they must enter into the fold of the Catho- 
lic Church to remain Christians, or become agnos- 
tics, which is a mild word for atheists. The foun- 
dations designed by Dr. Martin Luther for Chris- 
tianity, after three long centuries of experience, 



The Church and the Age. 211 



have crumbled away entirely, notwithstanding there 
are Christians, apparently intelligent, who celebrate 
with unusual eclat the fourth centennial birth-day 
of the pseudo-Reformer ! 

" Luther's appearance before the Diet of 
Worms," so writes Mr. Froude, " is one of the 
finest, if not the very finest scene in human history.'' 
His view of this scene is correct, if "to cleave a 
creed into sects, and fool a crowd with glorious 
lies," is a work worthy of the effort of a true Chris- 
tian and a sincere lover of his race. But from a 
Christian point of view the most pitiable spectacle 
that has happened since the heresiarch Arius de- 
nied the divinity of Christ before the Council of 
Nice was Luther's appearance before the Diet of 
Worms. What else at bottom was this scene than 
a crafty attempt to shift the authority of Christ's 
Church as the divinely authorized interpreter of 
revealed truth to the questionable suggestions, not 
to say illusions, of Martin Luther's imagination ? — 
a position which, viewed in its logical conse- 
quences and practical results, was an effort, under 
the plea of a resuscitated and purified Gospel, to 
undermine the Christian Church, to repudiate the 
Christian religion, and to deny Christ. If every 
accused person could change both court and law to 
suit his purposes, where would there ever be one 
found guilty? Men might with just alarm ask: 



212 The Church and the Age. 



What, in this case, would become of society, what 
of civilization? 

At the Diet of Worms Luther appealed from 
the jurisdiction of a lawfully-constituted court to 
the private interpretation of the Scriptures ; from 
the authority of the Church to his own individual 
judgment. Now, it is a misapprehension common 
among Protestants to suppose that Catholics, in 
refusing the appeal of Martin Luther at the 
Diet of Worms, condemn the use of reason or 
individual judgment, or whatever one. pleases to 
call that personal act which involves the exercise 
of man's intellect and free-will. - The truth is, 
personal, judgment flows from what constitutes 
man a rational being, and there is no power under 
heaven that can alienate personal judgment from 
man, nor can man, if he would, disappropriate it. 
The cause of all the trouble at the Diet of 
Worms was not that of personal judgment, for 
neither party put that in question. The point 
in dispute was the right application of personal 
judgment. Catholics maintained, and always have 
and always will maintain, that a divine revelation 
necessitates a divine interpreter. Catholics re- 
sisted, and always will resist, on the ground of 
its incompetency, a human authority applied to 
the interpretation of the contents of a divinely- 
revealed religion. They consider such an authority, 



The Church and the A % ge. 



213 



whether of the individual or the state, in religious 
matters as an intrusion. Catholics insist with- 
out swerving upon believing in religious matters 
no one but God! 

Let us not be misapprehended on this delicate 
and most important oint. The application of 
reason to the interpretation of the contents of a 
divine revelation is one thing. The application 
of reason to the evidence that God has made a 
revelation is quite another thing. The use of 
reason in the first supposition reduces the truths 
of divine revelation to the truths of reason, and 
this is rationalism pure. The other use of reason, 
to investigate and make one's self certain that 
God has made a revelation, is of obligation and 
is consistent with Christianity, which proclaims 
both the truths of reason and truths above 
the sphere of reason; but these latter, the re- 
vealed truths, are to be received solely upon the 
authority of God, the revealer, who cannot de- 
ceive nor be deceived. No rational creature feels 
any bondage in believing what is above and be- 
yond the grasp of reason upon the veracity of 
his Creator. 

This can be easily shown, and in a few words, 
by an analysis of the foundation of an act of 
Catholic faith. The Catholic faith rests upon 
thr.ee elementary facts— the competency of human 



214 The Church and the Age. 



reason, the infallibility of the Church, the veracity 
of God. He who undermines either one of these 
three positions destroys the Catholic faith. A 
Catholic who, from lack of sound philosophical 
principles, doubts the competency of human rea- 
son in its own sphere, is bound to hold it upon 
religious grounds, for he has no other competent 
voucher than reason for the divine claims of the 
Catholic Church. This is one of the essential 
principles of the Catholic Church, that she is 
accompanied with evidence of her divine char- 
acter ample to elicit from reason an act of assent 
which excludes all rational doubt. For since 
divine revelation springs from a source above 
the sphere of reason, it necessitates a divinely- 
authorized and divinely-assisted interpreter and 
teacher. This is one of the essential functions of 
the Church, which Christ planned and the Holy 
Spirit incorporated, and with which Christ prom- 
ised to remain until the consummation of the 
world. As to the veracity of God, the third es- 
sential element of Catholic faith, this is involved 
in the very idea of God's existence, which reason 
is competent to demonstrate. Cleared, then, from 
all extraneous matter, the main point in dispute 
between Catholics and Protestants is this : Catho- 
lics maintain the necessity of the divine au- 
thority of the Church in a revealed religion such 



The Church and the Age. 215 



as Christianity ; they are opposed to the introduc- 
tion of human authority, not in reference to the 
fact as to whether God has made a revelation, 
but to be exercised upon the contents of reve- 
lation. 

If you ask how the so-called Reformers could 
venture to substitute the private judgment of 
man in the place of the authority of the Church 
within the sphere of revealed religion, when 
without exception they held man to be " totally 
depraved," we reply, in the words of the Protest- 
ant historian Guizot, " The Reformation did not 
fully receive its own principles and their effects." 
That is, the Reformation was an insult to the 
common sense of mankind ! 

This, then, is the rational genesis of the Catho- 
lic faith. Without the competency of reason, 
within its proper sphere, one cannot know with 
certitude the Church of Christ. Without the di- 
vine authority of the Church of Christ men can- 
not know with certitude all the truths of divine 
revelation. Without the veracity of God one 
cannot believe without doubting what God has 
revealed. An act of Catholic faith includes nec- 
essarily each and all of these indubitable sources 
of truth. Hence when a Catholic makes an act 
of faith he says : " O my God ! I believe without 
doubting all the truths which the Catholic Church 



216 The Cfoirch and the Age. 

teaches, because Thou hast revealed them, who 
canst neither deceive nor be deceived." An act 
of Catholic faith is the synthetic expression of 
the highest value of human reason, the greatest 
dignity of man, the divine character of the Chris- 
tian religion, and the supreme claims of God upon 
His rational creatures. Thus Catholics alone can 
point to their first principles and boldly admit 
all the consequences which rightly flow from 
them. Catholics cannot withhold the exercise of 
their faith without doing violence to the dictates 
of reason. This agrees with what a celebrated 
Scotch metaphysician said to some ministers who 
visited him in his last sickness. " Gentlemen/' 
said he, when they pressed the subject of religion 
on his attention, " were I a Christian it is not to 
you I should address myself, but to priests of the 
Catholic Church ; for with them I find premises 
and conclusion, and this I know you cannot 
offer." 

Another source of misapprehension of the 
Catholic Church frequent, not to say common, 
among Protestants is the supposition that its 
authority is made a substitute for the guidance 
of the indwelling Holy Spirit. How many Pro- 
testants who pass for intelligent persons suppose 
that to make one's salvation secure as a Catho- 
lic all that is required is blindly to follow the 



The Church and the Age. 217 



authority of the Church and abandon one's con- 
science to the direction of her priests ! They im- 
agine the Catholic Church is a sort of easy coach, 
into which one has only to enter in order to be 
landed without exertion safely within the portals 
of paradise ! Nothing is further from the truth 
than this idea, for it can easily be shown that the 
internal guidance of the Holy Spirit is thoroughly 
maintained and faithfully carried out in the Cath- 
olic Church only. 

What, then, is Christian perfection, or sanctity, 
or holiness, according to the Catholic idea? Ho- 
liness consists in that state of the soul when it 
is moved inwardly by the Holy Spirit. Read the 
lives of her saints, Christian reader, if you desire 
to see this conception of Christian perfection 
practically illustrated. What else are the differ- 
ent religious orders and communities which she 
so carefully provides for her children who feel 
called by a divine counsel to a life of perfection, 
than schools wherein the principle of the internal 
guidance of the Holy Spirit is more practically 
applied and more strictly carried out than is else- 
where found possible? — spiritual schools # in which 
men and women are rendered, not, as some fool- 
ishly fancy, stupid or degraded, or taught to de- 
stroy nature,* or governed by arbitrary authority, 
but where souls are trained to follow faithfully 



2i8 The Church and the Age. 



the inspirations of the Holy Spirit ; where nature 
is completed and perfected by the contemplation 
of its divine Archetype ; where men and women, 
Christian souls, are taught not to be slaves to 
animal gratifications, but with high minds " to be 
strengthened by God's Spirit with might unto the 
inward man." 

The Catholic idea of Christian perfection as a 
system is built up, in all its most minute parts, 
upon the central conception of the immediate 
guidance of the soul by the indwelling Holy Spi- 
rit. The Catholic Church teaches that the Holy 
Spirit is infused into the souls of men, accompa- 
nied with His heavenly gifts, by the instrumental- 
ity of the sacrament of baptism. These are the 
words of Christ : " Unless a man is born of water 
and the Holy Spirit he cannot enter into the 
kingdom of God/' Thus a man becomes a child 
of God, according to the teaching of Christ, not 
by right of birth, but by the grace of baptism. 
By the creative act man is made a creature of 
God ; by the indwelling presence of the Holy 
Spirit man is made a Christian. The Holy Spirit, 
having taken up His abode in the Christian soul 
and become its abiding guest, enlightens, quickens, 
and strengthens it to run in the way of perfec- 
tion. It is also true that this high estate is at- 
tained first by the practice of virtue in bringing 



/ f 

The Church and the Age. 219 



the appetites of man's animal nature under the 
control of the dictates of reason. It is by the 
practice of virtue man is rendered, before all, a 
perfectly rational being. The men who kept un- 
der the control of reason the animal propensities 
of their nature by the practice of virtue illustrate 
the pagan ideal man. Zoroaster, Gautama, Con- 
fucius, Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aure- 
lius, and many other worthies of antiquity attain- 
ed to a greater or less extent this ideal of man. 
But Christian souls go far beyond this : by the 
practice of recollection, prayer, fidelity to divine 
inspirations, moved and aided by the gifts of the 
Holy Spirit, they render the dictates of reason 
submissive, pliant, and docile to the teachings and 
guidance of the Holy Spirit, until this becomes a 
habit and, as it were, spontaneous. Thus Chris- 
tian souls, by the interior action of the Holy 
Spirit, attain perfection — that is, become divine 
men ! This is the ideal Christian man, the saint ! 

Here, then, is the key to all the secrets of the 
economy of the Catholic Church concerning spi- 
ritual life. Hence the reception of the sacra- 
ments, the exercise of Church authority, and the 
practice of virtue are never presented as a sub- 
stitute for, but as subservient to, the immediate 
guidance of the soul by the indwelling Holy Spi- 
rit. 



220 " The Church and the Age. 

But suppose there is a conflict between the 
divine external authority of the Church and the 
inspirations cf the abiding Holy Spirit in the 
soul, what then ? To Catholic readers this seems 
a ridiculous question ; but we say to them, Be 
a little patient ; having answered the calum- 
ny thus far, let us pursue it to the remotest 
corners of its concealment. What then ? Why, 
then the reign of nonsense ! For if the Holy 
Spirit acting through the authority of the Church 
as the teacher and interpreter of divine revela- 
tion contradicts the Holy Spirit acting in the 
soul as its immediate guide, then God contra- 
dicts God ! Can anything be more absurd than 
this supposition? It is enough to know that the 
action of God in the Church and the action of 
God in the soul never have come and never can 
come in conflict. 

One more question or doubt, and we pass on. 
For it might be objected that the Catholic 
Church hitherto described in these pages is the 
Ideal Christian Church, and not the Roman Cath- 
olic Church ! To this we reply : The Roman 
Catholic Church is the Ideal Christian Church 
in so far as the Ideal Christian Church is not an 
abstraction but an existing fact, as it must exist, 
in men, women, and children, such as we are. 
Blindness to this plain truth is one of the main 



The Church and the Age. 



221 



reasons why many fail to see the Catholic Church 
as she is, and entertain so many absurd and fool- 
ish notions about popes, priests, and Catholics 
generally. This blindness is one of the princi- 
pal causes of the revolt of the sixteenth century, 
and demands more diffuse treatment, which we 
will now bestow upon it. 

It has already been shown that Christ dwells in His 
Church as the soul dwells in its body. But it must 
be borne in mind that the soul is not the body. 
So Christ is the soul of the Church, but existing 
in her members, men, women, children, such as 
we are, ignorant, weak, with propensities and pas- 
sions leading to the commission of sin unless kept 
under control. The popes, the cardinals, the bish- 
ops of the Catholic Church, and her people, are 
not angels dropped down suddenly from the skies, 
but sinners; and they are saved, if saved at all, 
solely by the grace of God. If St. John, the be- 
loved disciple, could confess with truth, " If we say 
we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth 
is not in us," how much more we ! Our Lord 
Himself puts into the mouths of His disciples, 
when teaching them how to pray, this petition : 
" Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those 
who trespass against us." No man prays to be 
forgiven for what he has not done. 

" All the beauty of the king's daughter is with- 



222 The Church and the Age. 



in." The human side of the Church is therefore 
a mixture of good and evil. Christ Himself has 
compared His Church to a field of wheat in 
which tares spring up with the wheat. The 
wheat sown was good, but tares 'came up also. 
But how came the tares ? " An enemy," said 
our Lord in reply, "has done this." Shall the 
tares be separated from the wheat ? No, He 
answers, let them grow together until the harvest 
time comes. Then the wheat will be garner- 
ed up in the barns and the tares be cast into 
the fire. This is a picture of the Church. Good 
Christians are the wheat. They hear the word 
of God and keep it. They will be garnered 
into the mansions of paradise. Bad Christians 
are those who are deaf to the word of God, 
listen to the tempter, follow their passions. These 
are the tares, which will be cast into the fire. 
This is the sifting Christ will not fail to make 
of the members of His Church at the day of 
judgment. In the meantime the wheat and tares, 
good and bad Christians, occupy the same field. 

The idea of a church whose members are all 
saints is an abstraction, and it has never existed 
upon this earth. It has no record in history, no 
warrant in Scriptures, and contradicts the predic- 
tion of Christ when He said : " Scandals must 
come." Hence sensible and well-informed persons 



The Church and the Age. 223 



are not surprised to find abuses, corruptions, scan- 
dals among the members of the Church. No in- 
structed Catholic will hesitate to admit, though 
with grief and sorrow, that there have been men 
of evil lives in the Church as popes, as cardinals, as 
bishops, as priests, as people. He who imagines 
there ever was a time when the members of the 
Church upon earth were all angels or saints is a 
dreamer. 

Such a state of things did not exist in Christ's 
own day. One whom He Himself had chosen to 
be an apostle was Judas, the traitor. Peter, the 
prince of the apostles, denied Christ thrice. The 
Scriptures say that Christ upbraided the eleven 
because of their incredulity and hardness of heart: 
" they did not believe those who had seen Him 
after He had risen." 

Such a state of things did not exist in apos- 
tolic times. St. Paul says that there were sins 
committed by the Corinthian Christians " the like 
of which was not among the heathens." Among 
his own perils he counts those from " false breth- 
ren." Again, he writes : " Ye have heard that An- 
tichrists shall come : even now there are many 
Antichrists." The sect of Ebionites, which existed 
in his day, denied the divinity of Christ, looked 
upon Paul as an apostate, and rejected all the 
gospels except that of St. Matthew. There were 



224 



The Church and the Age, 



those who called themselves Christians in apos- 
tolic times, and who protested against the doc- 
trines of the Church ; some denied her authority, 
others proclaimed themselves to be the true 
church. 

Such a state of the Church did not exist in the 
fourth century, when the divinity of Christ was con- 
troverted and denied by the Arians. This error 
was embraced by entire nations ; kings, emperors, 
priests, bishops, patriarchs held it ; ecclesiastical 
assemblies declared Arianism to be the true faith. 
Constantine, the first Christian emperor, banished 
Athanasius, the champion of the orthodox faith. 
But did the Church succumb? Not at all! 
Conflict with error, abuses, and disorders is the 
lot of the Church of Christ upon earth. It is 
for this reason she is called the militant Church. 
Those who look upon the primitive Church as 
the ideal Church, exempt from abuses and cor- 
ruptions, only display their ignorance of ecclesi- 
astical history. As in the past, so in the pres- 
ent, her enemies wiH be made to serve her cause. 
When the Church is disfigured by calumny she 
becomes better known ; when wounded she con- 
quers; when most destitute of all human help she 
is most powerfully aided by God. 

The Church of Christ on the divine side is al- 
ways perfect, on the human side always imperfect. 



The Church and the Age, 225 

This is why reform in the Church is always in 
order, separation never! 

The nature of the Church being understood, 
we can now take another step and ask : Shall 
we find errors, abuses, and corruptions in the 
Church in the sixteenth century? Evidently there 
must have been. It would be the greatest of 
all marvels if there had not been such. But 
were the evils of that period worse, more cry- 
ing, than at some other periods? This is a 
grave and most pertinent question, and, lest our 
answer should be suspected, we will let a Protes- 
tant of our day, well versed in history, answer 
this question in his own words. " It is not 
true," so says M. Guizot in his History of Eu- 
ropean Civilization, " that in the sixteenth cen- 
tury abuses, properly so called, were more nu- 
merous, more crying, than they had been at other 
times." To obtain a correct idea of the condition of 
the Church at this epoch let us set down naught in 
malice, but look the truth squarely in the face, 
and also extenuate nothing. The principal evils 
then complained of were the following : too 
great a diffusion of indulgences ; plurality of ec- 
clesiastical offices ; irregularity of the lives of 
ecclesiastics ; corruptions of the Roman court. 
There will rest no doubt upon the mind of an 
impartial person that these evils did then exist, if 



226 The Church and the Age. 

he will take the time and pains to read the letters 
of the popes, the decrees of the councils, provincial 
and general, and the lives of the saints of this 
period, say from the fourteenth to the sixteenth 
century inclusive. 

One step more. Had the Church within herself 
the means to reform these abuses and evils, or was 
it necessary to go outside her pale to accomplish 
this desired purpose? It would be a pity if the 
Church could not reform herself, for in that case 
she would be less wisely organized than the state. 
Every properly-organized state provides itself with 
the means for the reform of any evils which may 
spring up within its own body, without necessitat- 
ing recourse to revolution v Such was the foresight 
and care of the fathers of our republic that they not 
only provided means for reform, but even for the 
change, or even abolition, of the form of our politi- 
cal system by a two-thirds vote of the States. 
They acted upon the intention of removing all 
reasonable excuse for revolution. Now, Christ, 
who knew what was in man and foresaw the scan- 
dals that must arise — can it be supposed for a 
moment that He acted with less prudence, sagacity, 
and wisdom ? It was in view of this that the late 
Bishop Dupanloup said : " The Church is the only 
society upon earth where revolution is never neces- 
sary and reform is always possible." 



The Church and the Age. 227 



What were the means provided by her Founder 
to bring about reforms? First, her pontiffs. 
Second, her providential men and women — her 
saints. Third, her councils, national and general. 
These latter gave birth, if M. Guizot is to be con- 
sidered an authority, to modern representative 
political governments. But were these means 
employed in the Church at this period? A general 
council, the Council of Trent, was called in 1545. 
What kind of men composed it — were they intelli- 
gent, earnest lovers of truth, and sincere in their 
desire for the reform of abuses? Here are the 
words of the English historian Hallam on this very 
point : " No general council," says Hallam, " ever 
contained so many persons of eminent learning as 
that of Trent ; nor is there any ground for believing 
that any other ever investigated questions before it 
with so much patience, acuteness, and desire of 
truth. The early councils, unless they are greatly 
belied, would not bear comparison in these charac- 
teristics." One thing is historical : the reform 
inaugurated by the decrees of the Council of Trent 
was radical and complete — so much so that the 
abuses then complained of ceased to exist. " The 
decrees of the Council of Trent," says the Protest- 
ant German historian Ranke, " were received by the 
spiritual princes of the empire, and from this mo- 
ment began a new life for the Catholic Church in 



228 The Church and the Age. 



Germany." During the same period providential 
men and women labored incessantly in the different 
countries in Europe for the purification of the 
Church. We give a list of these ; though incom- 
plete, it is sufficient to show that there has scarcely 
been an epoch in the whole history of the Church 
when she could exhibit an equal galaxy of great 
men and great women — we mean great saints ! 

SAINTS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 



Spain. 
St. Ignatius, 
St. Francis Xavier, 
St. Francis Borgia, 
St. Teresa, 

St. John of the Cross, 
St. Peter of Alcantara, 
St. Thomas of Villanova, 
St. Lewis Bertrand, 
St. Paschal Baylon, 
St. Francis of Solano, 
B. Peter Claver, 
St. Joseph Calasanctius of 
the Pious Schools. 
France. 
St. Jane, Queen, 
St. Jane Frances of Chantal, 
St. Vincent of Paul, 
St. Francis of Sales, 
St. Francis Regis. 

Germany. 
B. Pe^er Fabre, 
B. Peter Canisius. 



Italy. 
St. Pius V., 
St. Philip Neri, 
St. Felix of Cantalice, 
St. Aloysius, 
St. Jerome Emiliani, 
St. Catherine of Genoa, 
St. Charles Borromeo, 
B. Charles Spinola, 
B. Lawrence of Brindisi, 
B. John Marinoni, 
St. Andrew Avellino, 
St. Camillus jf LeUi, 
St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi, 
B. Sebastian Valfre. 
St. Leonard of Port Maurice, 
St. Catherine of Ricci, 
St. Cajetan, 

B. Hippolytus Gallantini, Con- 
gregation of Christian ■ Doc- 
trine, 

St. Francis of Paula, of the Min- 
ims of Calabria. 



The Church and the Age. 229 



Holland— Martyrs of Gorcum, Nicholas Van Peppel. 



Nicholas Pieck, 
Jerome Werdt, 
Antony Werdt, 
Thierry Van Emden, 
Willehad Dan us, 
Godfrey Mervel, 
Antony Hoornaer, 
Francis De Roye, 
Cornelius VVyk, 
Peter Assche, 
Father John, 
Adrian Beek, 
Godfrey Van Duynen, 
Adrian Wouters, 
James Lacop, 
John Oosterwyk, 
Leonard Vechel, 



Portugal. 
St. John of God, 
Bartholomew of the Martyrs. 

• Poland. 
St. Stanislas, 
St. Josaphat. 

America, 
St. Rose of Lima, 
St. Alphonsus Toribio, Arch- 
bishop of Lima. 

England. 
Thomas More, 
John Fisher, 

Edmund Campion, and the other 
martyrs under Henry VIII. and 



Elizabeth. 

And now a word as to the supreme pontiffs of 
the Catholic Church. Because a man is called to 
occupy the chair of St. Peter he is not for that 
reason a great saint. A man may be a pope and 
his life be far from what it ought to be as a 
good Christian, and, above all, what it ought to 
be as one occupying so exalted a place in the 
church of God. Not all popes have been, like 
St. Peter, martyrs or saints, but a large number 
of them have been. The line of popes has been 
composed of men who, for greatness, virtue, intel- 
ligence, are far above any other line of rulers 
which can be named in the history of mankind. 



230 The Church and the Age. 

This is no boast, out sober truth admitted by com- 
petent and non-Catholic authorities. Leo X., who 
was pope at the period under consideration, was, 
according to men able to form a good judgment, 
more brilliant as a prince than as a Christian pon- 
tiff. Notwithstanding this, a Protestant, Roscoe, 
wrote an eulogistic biography of Leo X., and non- 
Catholic writers of history have spoken of him and 
his pontificate with praise ; yet Catholics remember 
his career with feelings of sadness rather than 
those of gratification. But it is the remark of 
Ranke "that since his time the lives of the popes 
have all been above reproach. " 

What, then, was the occasion Luther laid hold of 
to break with the Catholic Church? Pope Leo X. 
proclaimed an indulgence which was made known 
in Germany by a Dominican friar named Tetzel. 
Tetzel was a man of zeal, well versed in theology 
and gifted with eloquence. The people came in 
crowds to hear him and to gain the indulgence. 
Doubtless then, as now, there were Catholics who 
were more intent upon gaining the benefits of the 
indulgence than upon the dispositions which it re- 
quired. This need excite no surprise, for then, as 
now, many people neglected to be instructed in 
their religion ; then, as now, there were priests 
who neglected to instruct their people. 

Germany in Luther's time was in an uneasy state. 



The Church and the Age. 231 



The indulgence proclaimed by Leo X. was looked 
upon as an abuse, particularly so by the secular 
princes, who, with their empty purses, saw with feel- 
ings of reluctance money taken from the pockets 
of their German subjects and employed in building 
churches in Italy. Luther's voice was now heard 
in attacking indulgences and crying out for reform ! 
Reform was undoubtedly needed. All the sincere 
and earnest Christians of that day were in sym- 
pathy with this cry. Luther's position at that 
juncture of affairs was the right one. Listen to 
the letter which he wrote in 15 19 to the then 
reigning pontiff, Leo X. : 

" That the Roman Church," he says, " is more 
honored by God than all others is not to be doubt- 
ed. St. Peter and St. Paul, forty-six popes, some 
hundreds of thousands of martyrs, have laid down 
their lives in its communion, having overcome hell 
and the world ; so that the eyes of God rest on 
the Roman Church with special favor. Though 
nowadays everything is in a wretched state, it is 
no ground for separating from the Church. On 
the contrary, the worse things are going, the more 
should we hold close to her, for it is not by 
separating from the Church we can make her 
better. We must not separate from God on ac- 
count of any work of the devil, nor cease to have 
fellowship with the children of God who are still 



232 



The Church and the Age. 



abiding in the pale of Rome, on account of the 
multitude of the ungodly. There is no sin, no 
amount of evil, which should be permitted to dis- 
solve the bond of charity or break the bond of 
unity of the body. For love can do all things, 
and nothing is difficult to those who are united. " 

This letter has the true ring in it. The only 
position worthy of a true Christian and sincere 
reformer is within the Church. Separation from 
the Church is not reform. To stand up in God's 
Church and to cry out for reform of real abuses 
and scandals, fired with genuine zeal and pure 
love for the beauty of Christ's spouse, is a noble 
attitude. Such zeal, such love, is capable of doing 
all things. Had Martin Luther fought it out on 
this line the name of Luther of Eisleben, the 
Augustinian friar, would have been handed down 
with benediction and praise among such great 
names as Hildebrand, Bernard of Clairvaux, Bor- 
romeo of Milan, and other true reformers, to all 
future generations. 

But one is filled with astonishment in reading 
so strong and unanswerable a testimonial in fa- 
vor of the Roman Church, and that from the 
pen of Martin Luther, and written in the year 
of our Lord 15 19. Did he write it? One would 
scarcely credit the fact, were it not found in the 
History of the Reformation by that partisan, Merle 



The Church and the Age. 233 



d'Aubigne. Martin Luther wrote it ; was he an 
imbecile or a knave? Ignorant he was not. 

From a reformer Martin Luther became a re- 
ligious revolutionist: can you, honest reader, tell 
the reason for this change? Re-examine the event 
and see, on sound, rational, Christian principles, 
if you can. 



IX. 

PROTESTANTISM VS. THE CHURCH, 

MONG the causes which have affected the 
development of Christianity in modern 
times the religious movement of the sixteenth cen- 
tury called Protestantism stands foremost. Mil- 
lions of Christians within a short period of time 
separated themselves from what they had been 
taught to believe was the Christian Church. Now, 
it is unnatural, as it is unchristian, that men who 
have a common nature and a common destiny, and 
who acknowledge the same Mediator and Saviour, 
should stand towards each other in hostile attitude. 
All is not right where such a state of things exists. 
To produce such results there must have been 
error somewhere, and guilt too. For humanity 
means common brotherhood. Truth is one. And 
Christianity is, in the highest sense of the words, 
Love and Truth. 

These disagreeable facts, these primary truths, 
are becoming more and more apparent, and peo- 

234 




The Church and the Age. 235 



pie are becoming more and more convinced of 
them. Who knows? perhaps the time has come 
when men will consider impartially the causes 
which have brought about the deplorable re- 
ligious dissensions and divisions existing among 
Christians, and that a movement is about to set 
in on all sides towards unity, and the prayer of 
Christ that " all who believe in Him might be 
made perfect in unity " will find its fulfilment. 
This is our hope. To contribute to this result 
we labor. 

It is in the spirit of impartiality and charity 
that the investigation of this subject should be 
pursued. Perhaps we shall not succeed in this 
task as we would wish. Be that as it may, 
one thing our readers may be assured of : we ap- 
proach it with the sincerest desire to tell the 
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 
We have nothing to hold back. The man who 
fears to face the whole truth is a coward. 

The main point which faces every one who 
thinks seriously and consecutively on this sub- 
ject is the Church question. By resistance to her 
authority Protestantism was an attack against the 
Church. It is, therefore, impossible to investigate 
this matter thoroughly and to settle it satisfac- 
torily without first examining : What is the 
Church? Is the Church a voluntary assembly of 



236 The Church and the Age. 



Christians? or is the Church a society established 
by Christ, through whose instrumentality Christ 
makes men Christians ? Do Christians make the 
Church? or does the Church make Christians? 
That is the question. 

If Christians make the Church, as Protestants 
maintain, then to make the Church we must first 
hav@ Christians. This forces one to ask: How, 
then, does Christ make men Christians ? All 
men who believe in Christ agree that the only 
way of becoming a Christian is by a personal 
communication from Christ. We must ask, there- 
fore, what is the mode of that communication? 

Now, man is a rational soul and a material 
body united in one personality. This personality 
is ordinarily reached through the instrumentality 
of the body. Christ came in contact with men, 
when upon earth, through His bodily organization. 
The question, then, resolves itself practically into 
this : How does Christ, from generation to gene- 
ration until the end of time, reach men in order 
to make them Christians? or what is the princi- 
ple of Christ's personal communications to men ? 
The chief answer that Protestants give to this is, 
The Bible! 

If the reading of the Bible were the ordinary 
means appointed by Christ to receive the grace 
of saivation for all men, then the first thing one 



The Church and the Age. 237 



would suppose is this: as God wishes all men to 
be saved, He would bestow upon all men the gift 
to read at sight. But such, is not the fact. It 
stands to reason, then, that the reading of the 
Bible cannot be the appointed way, for those 
who do not know how to read, of reaching Christ 
in a saving manner. 

Again, everybody knows that one has to learn 
how to read. This is no slight task. It takes 
years to do it. Millions upon millions in the 
past never knew how to read. Millions upon mil- 
lions do not know now how to read. Millions upon 
millions for generations to come will not, most 
likely, know how to read. To make salvation 
depend upon reading the Bible excludes all these 
souls from eternal life. A religion based upon 
such an hypothesis is not a practical religion. 
Therefore it cannot be Christianity. 

Once more, if the reading of the Bible were 
the ordinary means of obtaining the power of 
God unto salvation, then one would reasonably 
expect to find recorded in the Bible from the 
lips of the Saviour Himself words of the following 
import : " Unless a man read the Bible and believe 
what he reads, he cannot enter into the kingdom 
of God." But such words are found in the Bible 
nowhere. The idea that one is to become a 
Christian by reading the Scriptures is not scriptural. 



238 The Church and the Age. 



The Bible in its completeness, such as we now 
have it, did not exist in early apostolic days. 
Yet Christians laid down their lives during this 
period in testimony of the divine character of the 
Christian religion ! Then, too, were given to the 
world the brightest examples of Christian he- 
roism. All these never saw the complete Bible, 
for the New Testament was not then all written. 
How, then, could the reading of the Bible, such 
as we have it, be the ordinary way of making men 
Christians? 

The art of printing was invented about the mid- 
dle of the fifteenth century after the birth of 
Christ. Previous to this it was a small fortune, 
almost, to possess a copy of the Bible. This lim- 
its salvation to the wealthy only. The poor and 
the illiterate, who make up the bulk of mankind, 
were on this hypothesis excluded, from necessity, 
at least for fourteen centuries and upwards, from 
the kingdom of heaven ! The thought is atro- 
cious. 

What is the Bible ? The genuine Bible con- 
sists in what the Holy Spirit inspired. But cer- 
tain books are held as inspired by some, and their 
inspiration is denied by others. It is notorious 
that men learned in these matters do not agree. 
Who is to judge which is which — what is the true 
canon of Holy Scripture ? 



The Church and the Age. 239 



What is the Bible ? Surely not the simple 
written words, but their meaning as intended by 
the Holy Spirit. Who is to determine, in case of 
doubt, what was the meaning intended by the 
Holy Spirit? The Protestant hypothesis supplies 
to the bulk of mankind no such judge, no such 
criterion. 

But suppose that everybody knew how to read, 
or all men were gifted to read at first sight ; sup- 
pose that everybody had a copy of the Bible 
within his reach, a genuine Bible, and knew with 
certitude what it means; suppose that Christ Him- 
self had laid it down as a rule that the Bible 
without note or comment, and as interpreted by 
each one for himself, is the ordinary way of re- 
ceiving the grace of salvation, which is the vi- 
tal principle of Protestantism — suppose all these 
evident assumptions to be true, would the Bible 
even in that case suffice to make any one man, 
woman, or child a Christian ? Evidently not ! 
And why? Because this is a personal work, and 
the personal work of Christ, for Christ alone can 
make men Christians. And no account of Christ 
is Christ. It was the special message of George 
Fox and his followers that the contents of a 
book, whatever these may be, are powerless to 
place its readers in direct contact and vital rela- 
tions with its author ; but nobody needs to be 



240 The Church and the Age. 



told this nowadays. No man is so visionary as 
to imagine that the mental operation of reading 
the Iliad, or Phcedo, or The Divine Comedy suffices 
to put him in communication with the personal- 
ity of Homer, or Plato, or Dante. All effort is 
in vain to slake the thirst of a soul famishing for 
the Fountain of living waters from such a source, 
or to satisfy the cravings of a soul for the living 
Saviour with a printed book! 

No doubt the written works of great men teach 
great truths, and great are the truths taught by 
inspired men ; but one may know the whole Bible 
by heart without being thereby nearer to Christ. 
Christ nowhere enjoins reading the Bible. His 
words are : " Come unto Me, all ye that are 
weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
No book must be interposed between the soul 
and Christ. 

Yet it was the attempt to make men Christians 
by reading the Bible that broke Christendom 
into fragments, multiplied jarring Christian sects, 
produced swarms of doubters, filled the world 
with sceptics and scoffers at all religion, frustrat- 
ed combined Christian action, and put back the 
Christian conquest of the world for centuries. 

Three centuries of experience have made it 
evident enough that if Christianity is to be main- 
tained as a principle of life among men, it must 



The Church and the Age. 241 



be on another footing than this suicidal hypo- 
thesis invented the sixteenth century after the 
birth of its divine Founder. 

Undoubtedly the Bible is a precious book. It 
is the most precious of all books. The Bible is 
" The Book." The reading of the Bible is the 
most salutary of all reading. We say to Catholic 
readers, Read the Bible ! Read it with prayer, 
that you may be enlightened by the light of the 
Holy Spirit to understand what you read. Read 
it with piety, that you may have the dispositions 
which will enable you to profit by what you read. 
Read it with gratitude to God's Church, which 
has preserved it and placed it in your hands to 
be read and to be followed. 

God forbid that a Avord should ever proceed 
from our lips or be written by our pen that 
would diminish your esteem for the Bible ! But 
it is not by fostering a false conception of its 
purpose, or by placing an exaggerated estimate 
upon its contents, that one learns its precious 
value. Great as this may be, Christ 13 more, is 
greater ; and even the Bible is not to be put in 
comparison with Christ. " What did you do with 
your Bible ? " asked one Christian of another. 
"What did I do with my precious Bible? 39 re- 
plied the saintly man. " Why, I followed its 
counsel: I sold it and gave the money to a poor 



242 The Chitrch and the Age. 

man in distress ! Does not the Saviour say, 
■ Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, 
and then come and follow Me ' ? " To substitute 
the Bible for Christ is bibliolatry. 

Abandoning all effort to conceive how, on the 
Protestant hypothesis, men can be made ration- 
ally Christians, let us suppose for a moment that 
individual Christians, no matter how made, are 
the instrumentalities by which Christ makes His 
Church. Consider the consequences which flow 
from this assumption as a working principle. 
Grant this, and what is there to hinder any 
body of Christians from resolving themselves, 
whenever they think there is a sufficient reason, 
into a church ? Why should not the discovery 
of a new truth, or a new interpretation of an old 
one, or the desire for a new rite or ceremony, 
or the revival of an obsolete one, or impatience 
with a hoary custom, produce a new sect, an ad- 
ditional ecclesiastical assembly, a church ? Why 
not ? Who as a Protestant can give good rea- 
sons why the protest against error, or the dis- 
covery of new religious truth, should stop with 
Martin Luther, or John Calvin, or Henry VIII., 
or John Knox, or George Fox, or John Wesley, 
or Mother Ann Lee, or Emmanuel Swedenborg, 
or Alexander Campbell, or Joseph Smith ? Was 
not the setting up a new church a thing com- 



The Church and the Age. 243 



mendable, a duty, a triumph of principle? Was 
it not on this individual conviction of duty or 
presumed personal right that Martin Luther had 
the hardihood or heroism to make his world-fa- 
mous assumption at the Diet of Worms? Was it 
not upon the same assumption that every single 
one of the so-called Reformers proceeded ? And 
what right had any one of these men that every 
other Christian man has not, and may not also, 
at any time he deems it proper, assume and freely 
exercise ? Whatever unspent force the Protestant 
movement may still possess, it moves in the di- 
rection of breeding new sects and forming new 
churches. Thus Christ, who prayed for unity, 
is made, upon the Protestant principle, the au- 
thor of division and the promoter of wrangling 
sects ! 

But sectarianism is not the ultimate outcome of 
the religious revolution of the sixteenth century. 
Suppose a number of Christians cannot agree to 
form another sect or make another church ; what 
good reason, assuming the Protestant basis, can be 
given why every individual may not determine to 
be his own sect or church? As a working principle 
Protestantism resolves itself into individualism. 

If "it was the resuscitated spirit of Jesus that 
began the revolt in the sixteenth century/' as the 
author of the volume entitled Ecce Spiritus would 



244 The Church and the Age. 



have men think, then Jesus was the author of indi- 
vidualism; and if of individualism, then of free- 
religion ; and if of free-religion, then Christianity 
means anything that you please to call it. For if 
free-individualism is the high court of jurisdiction, 
then there is no room left for an appeal. 

If free-individualism is Protestantism carried out 
to its logical consequences, then men who know 
how to put two ideas together in a logical form fail 
to see why the cloak of Dr. Martin Luther at the 
Diet of Worms does not cover under its folds 
equally the Anabaptist John of Leyden, M. D. 
Bennett, the late free-love editor of the Tmthseeker, 
the " insane" Freeman, and the murderer Guiteau. 
The declaration that Freeman, who, in obedience 
to an inspiration, killed his daughter Edith, was 
insane, and the condemnation of Guiteau, who 
killed President Garfield, as a murderer, may pass 
without note or comment in a Protestant com- 
munity, but men who look below the surface of 
things trace without difficulty the features of 
Martin Luther in the lineaments of Freeman 
and Guiteau. 

For men to whom thinking consecutively is a 
necessity do not hesitate to say that a religion 
which affords no criterion between the inspirations 
of the Holy Spirit and the criminal conceits of pas- 
sion, a religion which delivers the Bible to the inter- 



The Church and the Age, 245 



pretation of each individual for himself, leaves it- 
self open fairly to all sorts of attacks, and cannot 
reasonably condemn those who rely upon the pre- 
mise which it furnishes them for their justification 
when they follow it out to its logical conclusions. 
They do not hesitate to affirm that when Freeman 
was declared insane and sent to an asylum, and 
Guiteau was put on criminal trial, Protestantism 
was sent to Bedlam and tried for its life in a crimi- 
nal court. And when Guiteau was condemned by 
an American judge and jury as a murderer, and this 
verdict to all appearance was ratified by the Ameri- 
can people, then and there the standpoint of Pro- 
testantism was also condemned. For if the oracle 
within each individual is, in religion, the high tribu- 
nal of last appeal, when these men appealed to this 
oracle within to prove that they had done good and 
praiseworthy acts, and they were nevertheless con- 
demned, then the principle upon which Protestant- 
ism was started by Martin Luther was condemned 
and declared to be insanity. And now a bronze 
statue is about to be erected, or is already erected, 
in honor of Martin Luther, in the very city which 
hanged as a criminal, upon an infamous gallows, his 
logical child ! 

But if a statue were erected in every village, 
town, and city in the length and breadth of this ex- 
tensive land in honor of the pseudo-reformer, it 



246 



The Church and the Age. 



would not hide from intelligent men the falseness of 
the fundamental principle of the religious secession 
of the sixteenth century, or expunge its condem- 
nation by judge and jury from the authentic records 
of our American criminal courts ! 

But Freeman and Guiteau still claimed to be 
Christians, though Protestant ; and the more ven- 
turesome spirits, on the basis of " the divine right 
to bolt," feel at liberty to push forward their pro- 
test against all Christian truths, whether intellectual 
or ethical, as though chaos were the garden of para- 
dise and zero the ultimate goal of all felicity. Is it 
surprising, when such views circulate in a communi- 
ty, that in the course of time the complaint should 
be made of the lack of candidates for the ministry, 
the falling off of church membership, and the cry of 
alarm should be sounded of the impending danger 
of extinction ? Protestantism, like all other here- 
sies, failing to secure a rational foothold, disinte- 
grates ; and w T hen men once discern this fact no 
effort can prevent it from rapidly extinguishing 
itself. 

We now turn our attention to Catholics and ask 
them the same question: What is the Church? or, 
How does Christ continue to fulfil His mission upon 
earth from generation to generation unto the end of 
time ? We have Christ's own promise to remain 
upon earth until the end of the world, in these 



The Church and the Age. 247 



words : " Lo ! I am with you always, even unto the 
consummation of the world." And all Christians, 
as has been said, agree that Christ alone can make 
men Christians. The problem to be solved is this : 
How does Christ fulfil His promise? The Protes- 
tant solution of this problem is no solution. And, 
if in courtesy we allow it the name of one, experi- 
ence has demonstrated that it is unsatisfactory and 
self-destructive. How stands the case with the 
Catholic solution ? 

It is no answer, as we have seen, to say that the 
Church is made by Christians. Let us reverse the 
answer, and say that it is Christ, by the instrumen- 
tality of the Church, who makes Christians, and see 
whether the difficulty does not disappear. 

For Christianity, once the Incarnation is admit- 
ted, must, to be an effective and practical religion, 
somewhere exist as an organic force. This state- 
ment is based upon the principle that without or- 
ganism there is no vital force. Christianity is 
life, and no believer in Christ will for a moment 
deny that since God became man, Christianity is 
an organic force. Or what believer in Christ will 
entertain the thought that Christ will yield the 
advanced position He gained by becoming man? 
Life, then, to operate upon men effectually, must 
be organic, incorporated life. That Christ is the 
true life of men in the highest sense of the word He 



248 The Church and the Age. 



Himself affirmed : " I am the life of the world. " 
To a Christian mind this needs no further proof. 

This is why Christ Himself, before His ascension, 
designed His Church. Christ chose and appointed 
her first officers, conferring upon them their special 
powers, instituted her sacraments, laid down the 
principles of her discipline, and formed the main 
features of her worship. Christ was the architect of 
His Church, and the Holy Spirit incorporated what 
Christ had designed. 

Hence the Church of Christ, as an organism, is 
the logical sequence of the Incarnation, and not 
an accident or after-thought of Christ's mission to 
men as their Mediator and Saviour. The Church 
may justly be said to be the expansion, prolonga- 
tion, and perpetuation of the Incarnation. Behold 
the method by which Christ fulfils His promise to 
remain upon earth unto the consummation of the 
world ! 

We have now found the key of the Catholic 
position. This gives us the Catholic solution of 
the problem, Who built the Church ? A Catholic 
can claim with confidence as his motto: " Christ 
yesterday, to-day, and the same for ever ! " 

No other explanation of Christianity than the 
indwelling Christ in His Church as the actual and 
historical religion is tenable. Hence those sec- 
tarians who feel called upon to defend the Christian 



The Church and the Age. 249 

religion against the attacks of infidelity find them- 
selves forced to uphold the divine origin and 
character, not of the truncated and parvenu sect 
to which they belong, but the great historical 
Catholic Church — so much so that some of the 
more recent expositions and defences of the 
Christian religion might pass, with little or no 
essential alterations, the ecclesiastical censorship 
of the Church of Rome. 

Men build Churches ! Churches built by human 
hands ! — what else could these be fitly called but 
towers of Babel ? 

The Catholic idea, then, is this : that Christ, the 
only-begotten Son of God, has become man, and, 
after His ascension, continues His mission upon 
earth through the instrumentality of His Church 
as really and truly as when He was manifest in 
the flesh and w r alked among men, in the country 
about Judea. And all enlightened and upright 
men, when they see her as she is, recognize spon- 
taneously the Catholic Church as " the Body" or 
" the Spouse of Christ," just as the Israelites 
without guile recognized at first sight Christ as 
the Messias. 

We have seen who made the Church and what 
is the nature of the Church ; let us see now how 
Christ, through the instrumentality of the Church, 
makes Christians. The work of the Church of 



250 The Church and the Age. 

Christ is the continuation of Christ's own work 
upon earth with men. Christ's work was the com- 
munication of life to the world, to give the grace 
of filiation with God to men, women, and children. 
Now, as human beings are constituted they can 
neither act nor be acted upon independently of 
their bodily organization. Hence life, to be com- 
municated to men, must be organic. But the or- 
ganic communication of sonship with God belongs 
exclusively to the only-begotten Son of God, the 
God-Man. Hence the power and life of the Church 
can be no other than the indwelling Christ. As 
the soul is the life of the body, so Christ is the 
life of the Church. This is why St. Paul calls the 
Church " the Body of Christ.'' This is the reason 
why he who has not the Church for his mother 
cannot have the Son of God for his brother, and 
he who is not the brother of Christ cannot have 
God for his father. Therefore he who has not the 
Church for his mother cannot be a child of God. 
For the object of Christ in the Church is not to 
interpose the Church, or her sacraments, or her 
worship between Himself and the soul, but through 
their instrumentality to come in personal contact 
with the soul, and by the power of His grace to 
wash away its sins, communicate to it sonship 
with God as the heavenly Father, and thereby to 
sanctity it. None but a denier of the Divinity of 



f 

The Church and the Age. 251 



Christ will incline to regard such a doctrine as 
springing from "a materialistic view of Christi- 
anity/' 

For underlying the Incarnation there is neces- 
sarily an idea of materiality. " The Word was 
made flesh." God, who made the rational soul, 
made also the material body, and it is the rational 
soul united to the material body that constitutes 
man, and that constituted the humanity of Christ. 
It is spirit and matter united by the authority of 
Christ that constitute a sacrament. The Incar- 
nation is the universal sacrament, from which 
divine source the specific sacraments derive their 
grace and efficacy. 

Catholics repudiate both formalism and material- 
ism. They repudiate materialism, and consider it 
an insufferable tyranny for an assembly of men who 
profess to be Christians to insist, as most Protest- 
ant sects do, upon the reception of a sacrament 
whose inward reality they have repudiated ! This is 
rank materialism. If this be the only door which 
opens to Christianity, then it is no wonder that 
serious-minded men who have a conception of 
Christianity as a spiritual religion, rather than enter 
by such a door, seek a home in solitude and con- 
tent themselves in its haunts with nature and 
nature's God. At least they are resolved to keep 
their faculties uncrippled and their hearts upright. 



252 



The Church and the Age. 



Catholics repudiate formalism. A sacrament is 
no idle ceremony or mere outward sign, or rite, 
or symbol. A sacrament is an external means, 
instituted by Christ, to convey grace to the soul. 
These are the three essential elements of a sacra- 
ment, lacking any one of which it is no sacrament* 
Man is not a bodiless spirit ; a religion with- 
out a sensible sign or medium is not fitted for the 
two-fold nature of man. Christianity has abjured 
shadows ; and a sacrament is not a symbol of a 
process, but the very process itself of conveying 
grace to the soul. If a symbol lacks the grace of 
Christ, then it is powerless to regenerate and sanc- 
tify souls. A sacrament without grace is a fraud. 
God alone is competent to institute a sacrament. 
For God alone is the author and source of grace, 
and a sacrament not instituted by Christ has no 
valid reason for its existence. The realities which 
the Jewish ordinances foreshadowed and promised 
the sacraments of the Church of Christ possess and 
bestow upon men. The sacraments, the Church, 
the Incarnation, and the twofold nature of man 
are all essentially inter-related. The Incarnation, 
the church, and the sacraments rest upon the same 
foundation. 

But does God's mercy dispense no grace outside 
of the sacraments? God's mercy is not tied to the 
sacraments, but ordinarily He operates through their 



The Church and the Age. 253 



instrumentality. The sacraments were not insti- 
tuted to hedge in the action of God's mercy. On 
the contrary, the sacraments were instituted by 
Christ in order that the precious gifts of God's 
mercy might be more freely distributed and more 
abundantly received. Christ alone is the inward 
reality of the Church, of her sacraments, of her 
discipline, of her worship, and the Church exists 
solely for her inward reality — Christ. 

Neither should it be overlooked that when a 
church fails to supply sufficient external appliances 
and supports to spiritual truths and to the inward 
feelings of devotion awakened by grace, when her 
worship becomes colorless, then religion fails to ex- 
ert that influence over the minds and hearts of men 
which properly belongs to its sphere. And when 
religion fails to give, by the symbolical use of the 
beauties and harmonies of nature, that spiritual com- 
fort and inward satisfaction which the great bulk 
of mankind legitimately seek from it, they become 
restless, sad, and sour. The consciousness of 
spiritual destitution has led even the Unitarians 
to observe Christian festivals and decorate their 
religious structures with Christian art and with 
flowers ; while stiff Presbyterianism gives its re- 
luctant consent to the introduction of the " kist 
o' whustles" into its places of divine worship in 
order to lend more attractiveness to the singing 



254 



The Church and the Age. 



of the praises of the Lord. It is to this reaction 
against the repudiation of the corporeal side of 
man's nature under the pretence of a spiritual 
Christianity that the extravagances of ritualism, 
the crude efforts of Salvation Armies, and the 
rise of other disturbing elements can be traced. 

There is a heresy of the spirit, as there is a heresy 
of the forms, of religion. Both are mischievous, 
fatal to man's happiness, destructive of human 
society. Christ stigmatizes the partisans of both 
extremes as '"fools." "Ye fools," He said, "did 
not He who made that which is without make 
that which is within also?" All attempts at 
separating the without from the within, or the 
within from the without, betray heretical tenden- 
cies and end in spiritual death. 

True religion, Christianity, in its mission to sanc- 
tify human nature, takes it as its Maker made it, and 
neither seeks its destruction nor to alter its constitu- 
tion. It is a radical misconception to suppose that 
the reception of the sacraments abases religion. 
The sacraments are due to the wise provision of 
God to convey to men, in a way fitting to their na- 
ture, the grace of Christ. And the aim of Christ is 
the purification of human nature from all alien mix- 
ture, and, by its elevation to a higher plane of life, 
to enhance immeasurably its activity, its dignity, 
and its joy. 



The Church and the Age. 



255 



Behold the Catholic solution of the problem of 
the Church question, and how Christ through her 
instrumentality remains upon earth and makes 
men Christians ! 

Men hold the state sacred; and so it is. They can 
scarcely forgive those who revolt against the legiti- 
mate authority of the state. How great, then, must 
be the crime of those who revolt against the author- 
ity of the Church of Christ ! 

Men in whom intelligence has a controlling influ- 
ence in the formation of their religious belief look 
upon Protestantism as destitute of an intellectual as 
it is of a moral basis. They perceive that all the 
force it ever had was borrowed, and this is all 
spent, or nearly so. They have learned to cease to 
respect it as the representative of Christianity. 
They see also clearly enough that he who imagines 
that the age is seeking a new form of heresy is 
greatly mistaken. The age is weary of heresy, 
whether theological, philosophical, or scientific. 
Men are sick to death of heresy. What the age 
demands is more life, not less. Men seek fulness. 
The increasing tendency of the age is towards unity. 

They also misunderstand their age who fancy that 
the repudiation of sectarianism is a movement which 
ultimates itself in infidelity or free-religion. Some 
men of our times distinguished for their intellectual 
gifts have committed this mistake, and now find 



256 The Church and the Age. 

themselves entrapped into the pits of agnosticism, 
scepticism, and positivism. But there is no rest for 
souls in these stray places. The age is awake to 
better things. The repudiation of sectarianism, 
with sound and healthy minds, is a movement 
forward to genuine Christianity. 

They, too, misinterpret the promise of the age 
who look for the solution of its problems to a new t 
coming of Christ. Christ has come. Christ is here, 
now upon earth. Christ ever abides with men, ac- 
cording to His word. What the age promises men 
is the rending asunder the clouds of error which 
hinder them from seeing that Christ is here. What 
the age promises and men most need is the light to 
enable their eyes to see that the Incarnation in- 
volves Christ's indwelling presence in His Church 
acting upon man and society through her agency 
until the consummation of the world. Christ is 
here, and was never more so. 

The faces of upright men who best represent their 
age are set Christward. False Christianity has been 
forced to unmask itself. Men seek a closer fellow- 
ship with God. They ask to worship God in His 
very beauty, grandeur, and holiness. Some simply 
feel this. Some point out the way to it. Others 
are in the way. Others, again, have reached the 
goal ; these are the early-ripened fruits of the ap- 
proaching rich harvest of God's Church. 



The Church and the Age. 257 



Nothing less can satisfy the inmost desire of the 
soul, when once awakened, than truth in its whole- 
ness and fulness. The mists of heresy are lifted up 
to make way for the glorious vision of the Church of 
the living God, the pillar and ground of truth. The 
winter is past, the spring has come, and the voice 
of the turtle-dove is heard in the land. 



I 



X. 



THE SPIRITUAL WORLD AND THE 
RULE OF FAITH. " 



f T|*"\R. NEVIN'S* writings are characterized by 
fJL/ an earnest religious spirit, a freedom from 
bigotry, and they always aim at conveying some 
important Christian verity ; which, although he 
scarcely can be said to know it, finds its true home 
only in the bosom of the Catholic Church. Hence 
Catholics can but take an interest in whatever Dr. 
Nevin writes, and we intend to lay before our 
readers, with some remarks of our own, the purport 
of his present article, entitled " The Spiritual 
World." 

In this article Dr. Nevin tries to show and prove 
that the work of salvation includes not only the re- 
sistance to inordinate passions, but above all a 
struggle against, and a conquest over, the world of 
evil spirits. This is his thesis. He says : 

* " The Spiritual World," by J. W. Nevin, D.D., the Mercers- 
burg Review, October, 1876. 

258 



The Church and the Age. 259 



" Flesh and blood, self, the world, and the things of the world 
around us here in the body, are indeed part of the hostile force 
we are called to encounter in our way to heaven ; they are not 
the whole of this force, however, nor are they the main part of it, 
by any means. That belongs always to a more inward and far 
deeper realm of being, where the powers of the spiritual world 
are found to go immeasurably beyond all the powers of nature, and 
to be, at the same time, in truth, the continual source and spring 
of all that is in these last, whether for good or for evil. The 
Christian conflict thus, even where it regards things simply of the 
present life, looks through what is thus mundane, constantly to 
things which are unseen and eternal ; and in this way it becomes 
in very fact throughout a wrestling, not with flesh and blood, but 
with the universal powers of evil brought to bear upon us from 
the other world." 

The views strongly put forth by Dr. Nevin, 
we hardly need remark, are familiar to all Catho- 
lics; they agree with the doctrines of all Catholic 
spiritual authors, especially the mystics, who have 
written professedly on this subject, and their truth 
is abundantly illustrated on almost every page of 
the lives of the saints. The Catholic mystical au- 
thors, many of whom were saints, have gone over 
the entire ground of our relations with the super- 
natural world, and, both by their learning and per- 
sonal experience, have conveyed, in their writings 
on this subject, important knowledge, laid down 
wise regulations, and given in detail safe, wholesome, 
practical directions. They seem to breathe the 
same atmosphere as that in which the Holy Scrip- 
tures were written. The saints lived in the habitual 
and conscious presence, and in some cases in sight, 



260 



The Church and the Age. 



of the inhabitants of the supernatural world ; and 
so familiar was their intercourse with the angelical 
side, and at times so dreadful were the combats to 
which they were delivered on the diabolical side, 
that their lives, for this very reason, become a 
stumbling-block to worldly Catholics and to Protest- 
ants generally. In the lives of her saints the Cath- 
olic Church proves that she is not only the teacher 
of Christianity, but also the inheritor and channel 
of its life and spirit. How far Dr. Nevin himself 
would agree with this intense realism of the Church 
in connection with the supernatural world, as seen 
in the lives of her saints, we have no special means 
of knowing ; but if we may judge from the spirit 
and drift of the article under consideration, he goes 
much farther in this direction than is usual for 
Protestants. Be his opinion what it may, the lives 
of the saints form a concrete evidence of the truth 
of his thesis. It is the sense of nearness of the 
spiritual world, and its bearing on the Christian life, 
pervading as it does the public worship, the private 
devotions, and the general tone of Catholics, that 
characterizes them from those who went out from 
the fold of the Catholic Church in the religious rev- 
olution three centuries ago. This whole field has 
become to Protestants, in the process of time, a 
terra incognita ; and if Dr. Nevin can bring them 
again to its knowledge, and in " constant, living 



The Church and the Age. 261 



union " with it, he will have done a most extra- 
ordinary work. 

Efforts of a similar nature have not been wanting 
in one way or another, and are not now wanting, 
among Protestants. There are those who show a 
decided interest in the works of the spiritual writers 
of the Catholic Church. Strange to say — and yet it 
is not strange, for in this they follow the law of si* 
milia similibus — they are particularly fond of those 
authors whose writings are not altogether sound 
or whose doctrines are tainted with exaggerations. 
Thus Dr. Upham w T ill write the life of Madame 
Guyon ; another will translate The Maxims of the 
Saints, by Fenelon ; and to another class there is a 
peculiar charm in the history of the Jansenistic 
movement of Port Royal; others, again, moved by 
the same instinct, but better directed, will not hesi- 
tate to acknowledge with Dr. Mahan that " such in- 
dividuals as Thomas a Kempis, Catherine Adorno 
[he means St. Catherine of Genoa], and many others 
were not only Christians, but believers who had a 
knowledge of all the mysteries of the higher life, and 
who, through all coming time, will shine as stars of 
the first magnitude in the firmament of the Church. 
In their inward experiences, holy walk, and ' power 
with God and with men,' they had few, if any, 
superiors in any preceding era of Church history. 
1 The unction of the Spirit ' was as manifest in them 



262 The Church and the Age. 

as in the apostles and primitive believers " ; * while 
many of this class in the Episcopal Church translate 
from foreign languages into English the works of 
Catholic ascetic writers, and books of devotion, for 
the use of pious members of their persuasion. The 
Rev. S. Baring-Gould will give you in English, in 
many volumes, the complete lives of the saints. 
They even go so far, both in England and the 
United States, as to found religious orders of both 
sexes as schools for the better attainment of Chris- 
tian perfection, and venture to take the name of 
a Catholic saint as their patron. 

It is evident that, among a class of souls upon 
whom the Church can be said to exert no direct 
influence, there is a movement towards seeking 
nearer relations with the unseen spiritual world, ac- 
companied with a desire for closer union with 
God. It finds expression among all Protestant 
denominations. With the Methodists and Pres- 
byterians it is known by the name of " perfec- 
tionism," or " the higher life," or " the baptism of 
the Holy Ghost." It is also manifested by the 
efforts made now and again for union among all 
the Protestant sects. It is the same craving of 
this mystical instinct for satisfaction that lies at 
the root of spiritism, which has spread so rapidly 

* The Bapism of the Holy Ghost, by Rev. Asa Maban, D.D., 
p. 81. 



The Church and the Age. 263 



and extensively outside of the Catholic Church, not 
only among sceptics and unbelievers, but even 
among all classes of Protestants, and entered large- 
ly into their pulpits. 

The former movement assumes a religious as- 
pect ; but lacking the scientific knowledge of spiri- 
tual life, and the practical discipline necessary to its 
true development and perfection, it gradually dies 
out or runs into every kind of vagary and exagge- 
ration. Recently, after having made not a little 
commotion among different denominations in Eng- 
land and Germany, *it came, in the person of its 
American apostle, Mr. Pearsall Smith, to a sudden 
and disgraceful collapse. " If the blind lead the 
blind, both fall into the ditch." The latter move- 
ment — spiritism — leads directly to the entire eman- 
cipation of the flesh, resulting in free-lovism, and 
sometimes ending in diabolism. Spiritism is Satan's 
master-stroke, in which he obtains from his victims 
the denial of his own existence. These are some of 
the bitter fruits of the separation from Catholic 
unity : those who took this step under the pretence 
of seeking a higher spiritual life are afflicted with 
spiritual languor and death ; and they who were led 
by a boasted independence of Christ have fallen 
into the snares of Satan and become his dupes and 
abject slaves. Behold the revenge of neglected 
Catholic truth ; for only in Catholic unity every 



264 



The Church and the Age. 



truth is held in its true relation with all other 
truths, shines in its full splendor, and produces its 
wholesome and precious fruits ! 

Suppose for a moment that Dr. Nevin should suc- 
ceed in the task which he has undertaken, and by 
his efforts raise those around him, and the whole 
Protestant world, to a sense of their relation to the 
supernatural world. What then^? Why, he has 
only brought souls to a state which many Protest- 
ants have reached before ; and when they sought 
for the light, aid, and sympathy which these new 
conditions required, in those -around them, they 
found none. 

By quickening their spiritual sensibilities you 
have opened the door to wilder fancies, more dan- 
gerous illusions, and thereby exposed the salvation 
of their souls to greater perils. For, as St. Gregory 
tells us: u Ars artium est regimen animarum" — the 
art of arts is the guidance of souls ; and where is this 
art, this science, this discipline, to be found? Not 
in Protestantism. What then ? Why, either these 
souls have to renounce their holiest convictions, their 
newly-awakened spiritual life, and sink into their for- 
mer insensibility ; or go where they can find true 
guidance, certain peace, and spiritual progress — enter 
into the bosom of the holy Catholic Church ; there 
alone the cravings of that spiritual hunger can be 
appeased, and the soul can at last breathe freely. 



The Church and the Age. 265 



But there is another point involved in Dr. 
Nevin's article ; and however much, as Catholics, 
we may sympathize with his endeavors to awaken 
Protestants to their relations with the supernatural 
world, this point in question will come up, and we 
cannot help putting it : What is Dr. Nevin's crite- 
rion of revealed truth ? The rule of interpretation 
of the written Word ? Dr. Nevin has one ; for 
neither he nor any one else can move a single step 
without employing and applying, implicitly or ex- 
plicitly, a rule of faith. He criticises, judges, con- 
demns others, but on what ground? Does his own 
position, at bottom, differ from the position of 
those whom he condemns? He lacks neither the 
ability nor the learning to make a consistent state- 
ment on this point. Truth is consistent. God is 
not the author of confusion. 

Where does Dr. Nevin find or put the rule of 
faith? If it be placed in simple human reason, 
then we have as the result, in religion, pure 
rationalism. If it be placed in human reason illu- 
minated by grace, then we have illuminism. If it 
be placed in both of these, with the written Word 
— that is, the Bible as interpreted by each individ- 
ual with the assistance of divine grace — then we 
have the common rule of faith of all Protestants, 
so fruitful in breeding sects and schisms, and inev- 
itably tending to the entire negation of Christianity. 



266 The Church and the Age. 



This last appears to be Dr. Nevin's rule of faith ; 
for what else does he mean when in the begin- 
ning of his article, in its second sentence, he makes 
the following surprising statement : " Christianity 
is a theory of salvation " ? Did God descend from 
heaven and become man upon earth, live, suffer, 
and die, and for what? "A theory"! Is this 
the whole issue and reality of Christianity — " a 
theory," a speculation ? Did Christ rise from 
the dead and ascend to the Father, and, with 
Him, send forth upon earth the Holy Ghost, to 
create "a theory," a speculation, or an abstrac- 
tion? " Christianity a theory"! We fear that 
one who would deliberately make that assertion 
has never had the true conception of what is 
meant by the reality of Christianity. What would 
be said of a man who in treating of the sun 
should say : The sun is a theory, or a speculation, 
or an exposition of the abstract principles of light ? 
If the sun be a theory, it would be quickly asked, 
what becomes, in the meanw r hile, of the reality of 
the sun ? This way of dealing with Christianity, 
while professing to explain it, allows its reality 
altogether to escape. Notwithstanding Dr. Nevin's 
condemnation of " the abstract spiritualistic think- 
ing of the age, " and of those who would make 
Christianity " a fond sentiment simply of their own 
fancy, " he falls, in his definition of Christianity, 



The Church and the Age. 267 



into the very same error which in others he 
emphatically condemns. 

That this is so is evident ; for while he says, 
" Christianity is a theory," he adds in the same 
sentence, " and is made .known to us by divine 
revelation/' Now, the separation, even in idea, 
between the Church and Christianity, is the foun- 
tain, source, and origin of all the illusions and 
errors uttered or written, since the beginning, con- 
cerning the Christian religion. The attempt to 
get at and set up a Christianity independently 
of the Christian Church is the very essence and 
nature of all heresies. The Church and Christian- 
ity are distinguishable, but not separable ; and in 
assuming their separability, as a primary position, 
lies all the confusion of ideas and misapprehensions 
of Christianity in the author of the article under 
present consideration. This point needs further 
explanation, as it is all-important, and forms, 
indeed, the very root of the matter. " Christi- 
anity is a theory," says Dr. Nevin, " and is made 
known to us by divine revelation." But what 
does Dr. Nevin mean by " divine revelation"? 
Here are his own words in explanation : 

" When the question arises, How are we to be made in this 
way partakers of the living Christ, so that our religion shall be 
in very deed — not a name only, not a doctrinal or ritualistic 
fetich merely, nor a fond sentiment simply of our own fancy ?" 
" All turns in this case on our standing in the divine order as it 



268 The Church and the Age. 



reaches us from the Father through the Son. That meets us in 
the written Word of God, which, in the way we have before seen, 
is nothing less in its interior life than the presence of the Lord 
of life and glory Himself in the world." 

Again : 

11 We cannot now follow out the subject with any sort of ade- 
quate discussion. We will simply say, therefore, that what our 
Lord says here of His words or commandments is just what the 
Scriptures everywhere attribute to themselves in the same respect 
and view. They claim to be spirit and life, to have in them su- 
pernatural and heavenly power, to be able to make men wise 
unto everlasting life, to be the Word of God which liveth and 
abideth for ever — not the memory or report simply of such word 
spoken in time past, but the always present energy of it reaching 
through the ages. The Scriptures — God's law, testimonies, com- 
mandments, statutes, judgments, His word in form of histoty, 
ritual, psalmody, and prophecy — are all this through what they 
are as the ' testimony of Jesus ' ; and therefore it is that they are* 
in truth, what the ark of God's covenant represented of old, the 
conjunction of heaven and earth, and in this way a real place of 
meeting or convention between men and God. To know this, to 
own it, to acknowledge inwardly the presence of Christ in His 
Word, as the same Jehovah from whom the law came on Mount 
Sinai ; and then to fear the Lord as thus revealed in His Word, 
to bow before His authority, and to walk in His ways ; or, in 
shorter phrase, to ' fear God and keep His commandments,' be- 
cause they are His commandments, and not for uny lower reason — 
this is the whole duty of man, and of itself the bringing of man 
into union with God ; the full verification of which is reached at 
last only in and by the Word made glorious through the glorifi- 
cation of the Lord Himself ; as when, in the passage before us, He 
makes the keeping of His commandments the one simple con- 
dition of all that is comprehended in the idea of the mystical 
union between Himself and His people." 

According, then, to Dr. Nevin, " the divine order 
of our being " made " partakers of the living Christ 
is in the Word of God." 



The Church and the Age. 



269 



To make what is plain unmistakable, he adds : 

"What we have to do, then, especially in the war we are 
called to wage with the powers of hell, is to see that this con- 
junction with Christ be in us really and truly, through a proper 
continual use of the Word of God for this purpose." 

There is here and there throughout this article a 
haziness of language which smacks of Swedenbor- 
gianism, and makes it difficult to seize its precise 
meaning ; but we submit that Dr. Nevin — and he 
will probably accept the statement, as our only 
aim is to get at his real meaning — proceeds on the 
supposition that Christianity is a theory, and be- 
comes real as each individual, illumined by divine 
light, discovers and appropriates it in reading the 
written Word — the Bible. This is the common 
ground of Protestantism ; and Dr. Nevin holds no 
other than the rule of faith of all Protestants. The 
following passage places this beyond doubt or 
cavil : 

"It was the life of the risen Lord Himself, shining into the 
written Word, and through this into the mind of the disciples, 
which, by inward correspondence, served to open their under- 
standing to the proper knowledge of both. And as it was then, so 
it is still. We learn what the written Word is only by light from 
the incarnate Word ; but then, again, we learn what the light of 
the incarnate Word is only as this shines into us through the 
written Word — a circle, it is true, which alone, however, brings 
us to the true ground of the Christian faith." 

We need scarcely tell our readers that this pre- 
tended rule of faith is no rule of faith at all. It 
breaks down on any reasonable test which you may 



270 The Church and the Age. 



apply to it. It will not stand the trial of the writ- 
ten Word itself, nor of history, nor of common 
sense, nor of good and sound logic. This has been 
too often demonstrated to require here long argu- 
mentation. Therefore, when a man ventures to 
speak for Christianity, and professes to define and 
explain what is Christianity, the question rises up 
at once, and naturally: What does this man know, 
in fact, about Christianity? Did he live in the 
time of Christ ? Did he ever speak to Christ, or see 
Him? Was he a witness to His miracles? Why, 
no ! He can bear testimony to none of these 
events. If he was not a contemporary of Christ, 
what, then, does he know about Him ? Where has 
he obtained his knowledge to set up for a teacher 
of Christianity ? On what grounds does he pre- 
sume to speak for Christianity? Does he come 
commissioned by those whom Christ authorized 
to teach in His name? Why, no; they repudiate 
him in the character of a teacher of Christ. 
Does he prove by direct miraculous power from 
God a special commission to speak in His name? 
Why, no ! Then he has no commission, indirect 
or direct ; then he is unauthorized, he is a self-sent 
and a self-appointed teacher! 

But he fancies he has a right to speak for Chris- 
tianity on the authority of certain historical docu- 
ments which contain an account Qf Christ and 



The Church and the Age. 271 



His doctrines. But how about these documents? 
What authority verified and stamped them with its 
approval as genuine, and rejected others, which 
professed to be genuine, as spurious? Why, the 
very authority which verified these documents, 
and on which he has to rely for their genuineness 
and divine inspiration, is the very authority which 
altogether denies his presumed right of teach- 
ing Christianity ! The authority which authen- 
ticated them rejects as spurious his claim to 
be the interpreter of their true meaning. How 
does he get over this difficulty? He does not 
get over it. He cannot get over it ; he simply 
ignores it. 

But do these documents profess to give a full 
and complete account of Christianity ? By no 
means. He assumes this too. What ! assumes the 
vital point of a rule which is in dispute ? He does. 
Strange that those who were inspired to write 
these so important documents should not have 
written their great object plainly on their face ; and 
stranger still, if they did, that this should have 
remained a secret so many centuries before its 
pretended discovery ! 

Then this was not the way the primitive Chris- 
tians learned Christianity? Not at all. There 
were millions of Christians who spilt their blood 
for Christianity, and millions more who had died in 



272 The Chtirch and the Age. 



the faith, before these documents were verified and 
put in the shape in which we now have them and 
called the Bible. This pretended rule, then, un- 
christianizes the early Christians ? It does ; and 
does more — it unchristianizes the great bulk of 
Christians since ; for the mass of Christians could 
not obtain Bibles before the invention of printing, 
and could not read them if they had them. Even 
to-day, if this be the rule, how about the children, 
the blind, and those who cannot read — not a small 
number? How are they to become Christians? 

But as the Bible is an inspired book, to get at 
its true meaning requires the same divine Spirit 
which inspired it ? Of course it does. But do 
they that follow this rule assume that each one 
for himself has this divine Spirit? Nothing else. 
But are they sure of this? Sure of it? — they say 
so. But are they sure that each one has the 
divine Spirit to interpret rightly the divinely- 
inspired, written Word ? Each one thinks so. 
Thinks so ! But do they not know it ? Do 
they not know it ? Why, let me explain : 
"You see we learn what the written Word 
is only by light from the incarnate Word." 
But how do you get the light from the incarnate 
Word ? Why, " we learn what the light of the 
incarnate Word is only as this shines into us 
through the written word." That is, you suppose 



The Church and the Age. 



273 



that the Bible, read with proper dispositions, con- 
veys to your soul divine grace? Just so. That 
is, you put the Bible in the place of the sacra- 
ments ; but that is not the question now. The 
question, the point, now at issue is: How do you 
know that that light which shines into you 
through the written Word is not "a fond senti- 
ment simply of your own fancy," is not a delu- 
sion, instead of " the light of the incarnate 
Word"? "Oh! I see what you are aiming at. 
A book divinely inspired requires for its inter- 
preter the divine Spirit to get at its divine mean- 
ing. Now, if those who assume to possess this 
Spirit contradict each other point-blank in their 
interpretation of its meaning, then this is equiv- 
alent to charging the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of 
truth, w r ith error ; and such a charge is blasphemy ! 
But this is pushing things too far." 

Perhaps so ; nevertheless, those who follow this 
rule of faith do differ in their interpretation of 
Holy Scripture, and differ as far as heaven is 
from earth. There is no end to their differ- 
ences. Almost every clay breeds a new sect. 
They not only differ from each other, but each 
one differs from himself; and why? Because 
none are certain that they have the inspired 
Word of God except on a basis which under- 
mines their position ; and none are certain that 



274 The Church and the Age. 



the light by which they interpret the written 
Word of God is the unerring Spirit of truth. 
Hence all who hold this rule either go off into 
vagaries and delusions, or gradually decline into 
uncertitude, doubt, scepticism, and total unbe- 
lief. 

But how do the followers of this rule of faith 
interpret those passages of Holy Scriptures which 
speak so plainly of the Church? — for instance, 
where Christ promises to " build His Church, and 
the gates of hell shall not prevail against it " ; 
" He that heareth not the Church, let him be to 
thee as a heathen and a publican " ; " The Church 
of the living God, the pillar and ground of 
truth " ; " Christ died for the Church " ; " The 
Church is ever subject to Christ " ; and others of 
like import. They either pass them by as of no 
account, or deal with them as an artist does with 
a piece of clay or wax — they mould them to suit 
their fancy. Truly, this rule of faith reduces the 
divine reality of Christianity to the efforts of 
one's own thought — " a theory." 

Dr. Nevin may struggle against the inevitable 
results of this rule, as he does in several places in 
the present article, but he stands on the same in- 
clined plane as those whom he condemns, and, in 
spite of his earnest counter-efforts, he is descending 
visibly with them into the same abyss. For the 



The Church and the Age. 275 



effort to get at the reality of Christianity and to 
escape the recognition of the divine authority of 
the Church, through the personal interpretation of 
the written Word, is a vain, absurd, and fatal ex- 
pedient. " He that entereth not by the door into 
the sheepfold, but climbeth up another way, the 
same is a thief and a robber " (St. John x. 1). 

As the attempt to separate the Church and 
Christianity from each other empties Christianity of 
all its contents and destroys its reality, so, reversely, 
the conception of the transcendent union and in- 
separability of the Church and Christianity leads 
to the recognition of the living, constant, divine 
reality of Christianity. For the Christian Church 
was called into being by God, the Holy Ghost, the 
Creator Spirit ; and as this primary creative act 
still subsists in her in all its original vigor, she is, at 
every moment of her life, equally real, living, divine. 
Just as the created universe exists by the continua- 
tion of the creative act which called it into existence 
at the beginning, so the Catholic Church exists by 
the continuation of the supernatural creative act 
which called her into existence on the day of Pen- 
tecost. Once the Church, always the Church. 

The Church and the Bible are, in their divine 
origin, one ; they co-operate together for the same 
end, and are in their nature inseparable. But the 
written Word is relative or subsidiary to the Church, 



276 The Church and the Age. 



having for its aim to enlighten, to strengthen, and 
to perfect the faithful in that supernatural life of 
the Spirit in which they were begotten in the laver 
of regeneration, in the bosom of the holy Church. 
The purpose of the written Word is, therefore, to 
effect a more perfect realization of the Church, and 
to accelerate her true progress in the redemption 
and sanctification of the world. Hence the written 
Word presupposes the existence of the Church, is 
within and in the keeping of the Church, and 
depends on her divine authority for its authen- 
tication and true interpretation. The Church is 
primary, and not enclosed in the written Word; but 
the end of the written Word is enclosed in that of 
the Church. 

Were not a word of divine revelation written, 
the Church would have none the less existed in all 
her divine reality, and she would have none the 
less accomplished her divine mission upon earth. 
For God, the indwelling Holy Spirit, is her life, 
power, guide, and protector. God the Son was 
incarnate in the man Christ Jesus ; so God the 
Holy Spirit was incorporate in the Holy Catholic 
Church — Sanctus Spiritus est anima Ecclesice. 

Undoubtedly the Apostles were inspired by the 
Holy Spirit to write all that they wrote ; but their 
Gospels and their Epistles always presuppose the 
Church as existing. To appeal, therefore, from 



The Church and the Age. 277 



the Church to the written Word of the New 
Testament is, if nothing else, to be guilty of 
an anachronism. 

Even as to the Old Testament before the In- 
carnation, as well as the New Testament after the 
Incarnation, the reality of the Church consisted, 
independently of both, in that supernatural 
communion between God and man which began 
at the moment of his creation. The Church, 
therefore, existed in the garden of Paradise, and 
was historically primary in the order of superna- 
tural communications. 

Wherein does Dr. Nevin differ from the Ebion- 
ites, the Nicolaites, the Gnostics, the common 
Protestants, down to Joe Smith, Pere Hyacinthe, 
and Bishop Reinkens ? Perceptibly, at bottom, 
there is no difference. Dr. Nevin appears to have 
never asked himself seriously the most searching 
of all questions, to wit : What, in the last analysis, 
is the basis, standard, or rule by which I judge 
what is and what is not Christianity ? He ven- 
tures to treat of the gravest questions and most 
momentous mysteries touching the kingdom of 
God, on which the saints would not have ventured 
a personal opinion; and on what grounds? But 
it may be said in his excuse, and with truth, that 
this self-sufficient attitude is due to the very posi- 
tion of defiance to the divine authority of the 



The Church and the Age. 



Church in which all those who have gone out, or 
are born out, of her fold are necessarily involved. 

To sum up : Either we must suppose that God 
has left the task to every individual to direct the 
human race to the great end for which He created 
it — and thus the individual occupies the place of 
Almighty God, and turns the crank of the universe 
to suit his own fancy, or the schemes and theories 
of his little brain — or we must believe in " a divine 
order, " in being made constant partakers of the 
living Christ " in a concrete form. " In this case, 
our first duty is to find this real concrete body, 
become a member and partaker of its divine life,, 
and, in conquering the obstacles in the way of our 
salvation, co-operate in its divine work for the 
sanctification of the whole world. 



XL 



UNITARIANISM AND THE FATHER- 
HOOD OF GOD.* 



HE Unitarians held at Saratoga their last 
biennial conference, and we have looked 
over the issues of the Liberal Christian, a 
weekly publication of this city, for a full re- 
port of its proceedings, and looked to no pur-- 
pose. It has, however, printed in its columns 
some of the speeches delivered in the confer- 
ence, and given in extenso the opening sermon of 
the Rev. Edward E. Hale. Before the confer- 
ence took place the Liberal Christian spoke of 
Rev. Edward E. Hale " as one of the few thor- 
oughly-furnished and widely-experienced men in 
their ranks/' This notice prepared us to give 
special attention to the opening sermon, and to 
expect from it a statement of Unitarian princi- 
ples or beliefs which would at least command the 

*"A Free-born Church." The sermon preached before the 
National Conference of Unitarian and other Christian Church- 
es at Saratoga, Tuesday evening, Sept. 12. The Liberal Chris- 
tian y New York, Sept. 16, 1876. 

279 




280 The Church and the Age. 



assent of a considerable portion of the Unita- 
rian denomination. More than this it would have 
been unreasonable to anticipate ; for so radical 
and extreme are their divergencies of belief that 
it may be said Unitarians agree on no one com- 
mon objective truth; certainly not, if Mr. Froth- 
ingham and the section which the latter gentle- 
man represents are to be ranked within the pale 
of Unitarianism. 

But let us -consider for a moment Mr. Hale's 
view of the historical aspect of the Church. 
The following extract sums up his opinion : 

" And, in truth, so soon as the Church met with the 
world, it borrowed while it lent, it took while it gave. So, 
in the face of learned Egypt, it Egyptianized its simple 
Trinity ; in the face of powerful Rome it heathenized its nas- 
cent ritual ; in the face of wordy Greece it Hellenized its 
dogmatics and theology ; and by way of holding well with 
I-rael it took up a rabbin's reverence even for the jots 
and tittles of its Bible. What history calls 4 Christianity,' 
therefore, is a man-adorned system, of which the methods 
can be traced to convenience, or even to heathen wisdom, 
if we except that one majestic method by which every true 
disciple is himself ordained a king and a priest, and re- 
ceives the charge that in his daily life he shall proclaim glad 
tidings to every creature. " 

The common error of the class of men to 
whom the Rev. E. E. Hale belongs, who see 
the Church, if at all, only on the outside, is to 
" put the cart before the horse." It is not the 
Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, who teach 
the Church of Christ, but the Church of Christ 



The Church and the Age. 281 



which teaches the truth to the Egyptians, the 
Greeks, and the Romans. Christ came to teach 
all nations, not to be taught by them. Hence, 
in communicating His mission to His Church, 
He said: "All power is given to Me in heaven 
and in earth. Going, therefore, teach ye all na- 
tions." * The Church, in fulfilling this divine 
commission of teaching all nations, utilizes their 
gifts in bringing out the great truths commit- 
ted to her care by her divine Founder. It is 
in this co-operation with the work of the Church 
that the different nations and races of men find 
the inspiration of their genius, the noblest em- 
ployment of their highest faculties, and the re- 
alization of their providential mission upon earth. 
For the scattered rays of religious truth which 
were held by the different nations and races of 
men under paganism were derived from primi- 
tive revelation, and it is only when these are 
brought within the focus of the light of univer- 
sal truth that their complete significance is ap- 
preciated and they are seen in all their original 
splendor. The Catholic Church, in this aspect, 
is the reintegration of natural religion with the 
truths contained in primitive revelation and their 
perfect fulfilment. Moreover, there is no truth 
contained in any of the ancient religions before 



* St. Matt, xxviii. 18, 19. 



282 The Church and the Age. 



the coming of Christ, or affirmed by any of 
the heresies since that event, or that may be 
hereafter affirmed, which is not contained, in all 
its integrity, in Catholicity. This is only saying, 
in other words, The Catholic Church is catholic. 

But these men appear to regard Christianity 
as still an unorganized mass, and they are pos- 
sessed with the idea that the task is imposed 
upon them to organize the Christian Church ; 
and this work occupied and perplexed them not 
a little in their Unitarian biennial conference 
held in the town of Saratoga, in the United 
States of North America, in the month of Sep- 
tember, in the year of our Lord eighteen hun- 
dred and seventy-six ! 

"Poor wanderers! ye are sore distrest 
■ To find the path which Christ has blest, 
Tracked' by His saintly throng; 
Each claims to trust his own weak will — ; 
Blind idol ! — so ye languish still, 
All wranglers, and all wrong "* 

Were the veil taken from their spiritual eyes, 
and did they behold the Church as she is, they 
would easily comprehend that her unbroken ex- 
istence for nineteen centuries alone, saying no- 
thing of what glory is in store for her in the 
future, is a more evident and conclusive proof 
of the divinity of her Founder than the mir- 



* Dr. Newman. 



The Church and the Age. 283 



acle of His raising Lazarus from the dead was 
to those who were actual witnesses of it. For, 
in raising Lazarus from the dead, He had but 
to deal with passive matter, and that for only an 
instant ; whereas in founding His Church he had 
to exert His power and counteract all the at- 
tacks of the gates of hell, combined with the 
persecutions of the world and the perversities of 
men, during successive centuries until the end of 
all time. None but the living God could be the 
author of so potent, comprehensive, and inde- 
structible a body as the Catholic Church. Of all 
the unanswerable testimonies of the divinity of 
Christ, there is none so forcible as that of the 
perpetual existence of the one, holy, Roman 
Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is the 
standing miracle of Christ. 

The reverse sense of the statement of the Rev. 
Edward E. Hale on this point contains the truth. 
The Catholic Church welcomes all nations and 
races to her fold, and reintegrates the scattered 
truths contained in every religious system, not 
by way of reunion or composition, but by sim- 
plicity and unity in a divine synthesis ; and as 
did the ancient Egyptians, and the Greeks, and 
the Romans, so also the modern Franks and 
Celts have served by their characteristic gifts to 
the development and progress of Christian truth. 



284 



The Church and the Age. 



In like manner the Saxons, with their peculiar 
genius and instincts, will serve, to their own 
greater glory, in due season, in the same great 
cause ; perhaps they will do so by giving a 
greater development and a more scientific expres- 
sion to the mystic life of the Church, and by 
completing, viewed from intrinsic grounds, the 
demonstration of the truth of her divine mission. 

Leaving aside other misstatements and errors 
contained in the first part of this sermon from 
want of space, we pass on to what may be term- 
ed its pith. Mr. Hale starts with the hazardous 
question, " What is the Unitarian Church for?'' 
As far as we can make out from repeated read- 
ing of the main portion of the sermon — for there 
reigns a great confusion and incoherence in his 
ideas — the Unitarian Church has for its mission 
to certify anew and proclaim the truth that "God 
is in man." "God in man," he says, "is in itself 
the basis of the whole Gospel." Undoubtedly 
" God is in man," and God is in the brute, 
and God is in every grain of sand, and God is in 
all things. God is in all things by His immen- 
sity — that is, by His essence, and power, and 
presence. But this is a truth known by the 
light of human reason, and taught by all sound 
philosophers, heathen and Christian. There was 
no need of the Gospel, nor of that " fearless- 



The Church and the Age. 285 



ness" which, he tells us, " was in the Puritan 
blood," nor of the Unitarian Church, to teach 
this evident and common truth to mankind. 

The Gospel message means more than that, 
and the Rev. Mr. Hale has some idea that it 
does mean more. He adds: " Every man is 
God's child, and God's Spirit is in every life." 
Again : " Men are the children of God really 
and not figuratively " ; " The life of God is their 
life by- real inheritance." After having made 
these statements, he attempts to give the basis 
and genesis of this relation of God to man as 
father to child : 

"That ths force which moves all nature is one force, and 
not man)', appears to all men, as they study it, more and 
more. That this force is conscious of its own existence, 
that it is conscious of its own work, that it is therefore 
what men call spirit, that this spirit has inspired and still 
inspires us, that we are therefore not creatures of dumb 
power but children of a Father's love- -this is the certainty 
which unfolds itself or reveals itself, or is unfolded or is 
revealed, as higher and higher man ascends in his know- 
ledge of what IS." 

That man, by the light of his reason, can, by 
the study of nature, attain to the idea of God 
and His principal attributes, as Spirit, as Creator, 
upholder of the universe, and as Providence, is 
no doubt true; but that, by the study of " the 
force which moves all nature," our own con- 
sciousness included, we can learn that we are 
the " children of a Father's love/' does not fol- 



286 The Church and the Age. 



low, and is quite another thing. It is precisely 
here that Unitarianism, as a consistent, intelligi- 
ble religious system, crumbles into pieces. Nor 
can Unitarians afford to follow the Rev. Edward 
E. Hale in his attempt to escape this difficulty 
by concealing his head, ostrich-like, under the 
sand of a spurious mysticism, and virtually re- 
pudiating the rational element in religion by say- 
ing : " The mystic knows that God is here now. 
He has no chain of posts between child and 
Father. He relies on no long, logical system of 
communication, " etc. The genuine mystic, in- 
deed, "knows God is here," but He knows also 
that God is not the author of confusion, and to 
approach Him God does not require man to put 
out the light of his reason. He will tell us that 
the relation of God to all things as created be- 
ing, and the relation of God to man as rational 
being, and the relation of God to man as fa- 
ther to child, are not one and the same thing, and 
ought not, therefore, to be confounded. The true 
mystic will further inform us that the first rela- 
tion, by w r ay of immanence, is common to all 
created things, man included ; the second, by way 
of rationality, is common to the human race ; the 
third, by way of filiation, is common to those 
who are united to God through the grace of 
Christ. The first and second are communicated 



The Church and the Age. 287 



to man by the creative act of God, and are 
therefore ours by right of natural inheritance 
through Adam. The third relation is communi- 
cated to us by way of adoption through the 
grace of the new Adam, Christ, who is " the 
only-begotten Son of God." This relation is not, 
therefore, ours by inheritance. We " have receiv- 
ed from Christ," says St. Paul to the Romans, 
" the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry : Abba, 
Father."* " By whom also we have access through 
faith into this grace, wherein we stand, and glory 
in the hope of the glory of the sons of God." f 
It is proper to remark here that it is an error 
very common among rationalists and a certain 
class of Unitanans to suppose that the relation 
of the soul to God by way of filiation, due to 
Christ, is intended as a substitute for our natural 
relations to God by way of immanence and ra- 
tionality ; whereas Christianity presupposes these, 
reaffirms, continues, completes, and perfects them, 
by this very gift of filiation with God. For it is 
a maxim common to all Catholic theologians 
that gratia supponit et perficit naturam. 

Our intelligent mystic would not stop here. 
Proceeding further, he would say that to be real- 
ly and truly children of God by inheritance im- 
plies our being born with the same identical 



* Rom. viii. 15. 



f Ibid. v. 2. 



288 The Church and the Age. 



nature as God. For to be a child by nature is not 
to have a resemblance to, or to be an image of the 
father, but consists in possessing the same iden- 
tical essence and nature as the father.* If the 
son is equal to his father by nature, then he is 
also equal to his father in his natural capacities. 
Now, if every man, by nature, has the right to 
call God father, as the Rev. Mr. Hale and his 
co-religionists pretend, then all men by nature 
are equal to God, both in essence and attri- 
butes! Is this what Unitarians mean by " the 
divinity of human nature"? The Rev. E. E. Hale 
appears to say so when he tells us : " What we 
are struggling for, and what, if words did not 
fail us, we would fain express, is what Dr. James 
Walker called ' the identity of essence of all spir- 
itual being and all spiritual life.' " All, then, 
that the believers in the divinity of Christ claim 
exclusively for Him is claimed by Unitarians 
equally for every individual of the human race. 
But the belief in the divinity of Christ is " the 
latest and least objectionable form of idolatry " 
— so the Rev. H. W. Bellows informs us in his 
volume entitled Phases of Faith. The Unitarian 
cure, then, for the evil of idolatry is by substi- 



* M Sed ad hoc, quod sit filius, requiritur quod procedens ab al- 
tero sk.iilitudinem habeat ejus a quo procedit, et sit ejusdem 
naturae cum eo " (St. Thorn., Opus, contr. Graec, etc., cap. 3). 



The Church and the Age. 289 



tuting an indefinite multitude of idols for one 
single object of idolatrous worship. 

There is one class of Unitarians, to which the 
author of this sermon seems to belong, who 
accept boldly the consequences of their premise, 
and maintain without disguise that all men are 
by nature the equals of Christ, and that there 
is no reason why they should not, by greater 
fidelity to their nature, surpass Christ. Up to this 
period of time, however, they have not afforded to 
the world any very notable specimen of the truth 
of their assertion. Another class attempt to 
get over the difficulty by a critical exegesis 
of the Holy Scriptures, denying the authen- 
ticity or the meaning of those parts which re- 
late to the miraculous conception of Christ, His 
miracles, and His divinity. A representative of 
the extreme wing on the right of Unitarianism 
replied, when this point was presented to him : 
" Oh ! we Unitarians reject the idea of the Trin- 
ity as represented by Calvinists and other Pro- 
testants, for they make it a tritheism ; but we ac- 
cept the doctrine as holy mother Church teaches 
it " ; while a leader of the extreme left admit- 
ted the difficulty, and in speaking of Dr. Chan- 
ning, who championed the idea of the filiation 
of man to God, he said: " No intelligent Unita- 
rian of to-day would attempt to defend the Uni- 



290 



The Church and the Age. 



tarianism of Dr. Charming." He was right, for 
no Unitarian, on the basis of his belief, can say 
consistently the Lord's Prayer ; for the Catholic 
doctrine of the Incarnation is a rigorous neces- 
sity to any one who admits the infinite and 
the finite, and the necessity of a union of love 
between them which authorizes the finite to call 
the Infinite Father ! One may bestow sympathy 
upon the pious feelings of that class of Unita- 
rians of which Dr. Channing is the representa- 
tive, but the less said about their theological 
science the better. 

Our genuine mystic would not stop here. He 
would continue and show that the denial of the 
Incarnation involves the denial of the Trinity, 
and the denial of the Trinity reduces the idea 
of God to a mere abstraction. For all concep- 
tion of real life is complex. The intellectual life of 
man in its simplest elements, in its last analysis, will 
be found to consist of three factors: Man as the 
thinker, one factor ; the thing thought, the second 
factor; and their relation, the third factor: — or 
the lover, the beloved, and their relation ; again, 
the actor, the thing acted upon, and their rela- 
tion. Man cannot think, love, or act where there 
is nothing to think, to love, or to act upon. 
Place man where there is nothing except him- 
self, and you have man in posse, but not as ac- 



The Church and the Age. 



291 



tual being, not living man. You have a unit, an 
abstraction, nothing more. But mere abstractions 
have no real existence. Our conception of life 
in accordance with the law which governs our 
intelligence is comprised in three terms — subject, 
object, and their relation.* There is no possi- 
ble way of bringing out of a mere unit, as our 
absolute starting point of thought, any intel- 
lectual conception whatever. But the Unitarian 
idea of God is God reduced to a simple, ab- 
solute unit. Hence the Unitarian idea of God 
is not the conception of the real, living God, but 
an abstraction, impotent, sterile — a non existing 
God. 

Our genuine mystic would proceed still further; 
he would affirm that infused light and love from 
above do not suspend or stultify the natural ac- 
tion of our faculties, but quicken, elevate, and 
transform their operations. He w r ould apply, by 
way of analogy, the same process of thought in 
confirmation of the Catholic doctrine of the Trin- 

* " Liquido tenendum est, quod omnis res, quamcumque 
cognoscimus, congenerat in nobis notitiam sui. Ab utroque 
enim notitia paritur, a cognoscente et cognito " (St. Augustine, 
De Jrinitate, s. ix. c. xii.) — Wherefore, it must be clearly held 
that everything whatsoever that we know begets at the same time 
in us the knowledge of itself ; for knowledge is brought forth 
from both, from the knower and from the thing known. Again, 
" Behold, then, there are three things: he that loves, and that 
which is loved, and love'' (s. viii. c x. , ibid.) 



292 



The Church and the Age. 



ity. If there had been a time, he would say, 
when there was no object before God, then there 
would have been a period when God was not 
the real, living God, but only God in posse, non- 
existing. But this is repugnant to the real con 
ception of God ; therefore the true idea of God 
involves a co-eternal object. If, however, this co- 
eternal object was not equal to God in substance 
as well as in attributes, then there would have 
been a period when God did not exist in all His 
fulness. Now, this object, co-eternal and equal to 
God the Father, is what the Catholic doctrine 
teaches concerning Christ, the only-begotten Son 
of the Father, " begotten before all ages, consub- 
stantial with the Father/' But the Father 
and the Son being co-eternal and co adequate, 
their relations to each other must have been 
eternal and equal, outflowing towards each other 
in love, commensurate with their whole nature. 
This procession of mutual love between Father 
and Son is what the Catholic doctrine teaches 
concerning the Holy Spirit. Thus we see, how- 
ever imperfectly, that the Catholic doctrine con- 
cerning the Trinity presents to our minds no- 
thing that is contrary to our reason, though it 
contains an infinite abyss of meaning beyond the 
present scope of our reason, but which we shall 
know when our reason is increased, as it will be, by 



The Church and the Age, 293 



the gift of the light of glory. But every mys- 
tery of Christianity has an intelligible side to our 
natural reason, and it is the privilege and joy 
of a Christian while here upon earth to pene- 
trate, by the light of faith, more and more deep- 
ly into their hidden, divine truth. 

Again, the Unitarian is mistaken when he sup- 
poses that Catholics, in maintaining the Trinity, 
exclude the divine Unity. They include both in 
one. Herein again is found in man an analogy. 
Man is one in triplicity. Man is thought, love, 
arid activity, and at the same time man is one. 
He thinks, he loves, he acts ; there are not three 
distinct men, one who thinks, another who loves, 
and still another who acts. There is, therefore, 
a sense in which man is one in three and three 
in one. So there is in the Trinity. The Unita- 
rians are right in affirming the divine Unity; their 
error consists in excluding the divine Trinity. 
Heresies are often right in what they affirm, and 
wrong in what they exclude or deny ; which de- 
nial is the result of their breaking away from that 
divine Unity in whose light alone every truth is 
seen in its correlation with all other truths. 

Our true mystic would not be content to rest 
here, but, soaring upwards upon the wings of divine 
light and love, and taking a more extended 
view, he would strive to show that where the 



294 The Church and the Age. 



doctrine of the Trinity is not held either expli- 
citly or implicitly, there not only the theory of 
our mental operations and the intellectual foun- 
dations of religion dissolve into a baseless fab- 
ric of a vision, but that also the solid basis of 
society, the true idea of the family, the right 
conception of the state and its foundations, and 
the law of all genuine progress, are wanting, and 
all human things tend towards dissolution and 
backward to the reign of old chaos. 

We give another characteristic statement of 
the Rev. Edward E. Hale's opening sermon which 
must have grated harshly on the ears of the more 
staid and conservative portion of his audience ; 
it is under the head of " The immanent presence 
of God." He says: 

" The Roman Church will acknowledge it, and St. Fran- 
cis and St. Vincent and Fenelon will illustrate it. But, at the 
same time, the Roman Church has much else on her hands. 
She has to be contending for those seven sacraments, for this 
temporal power, all this machinery of cardinals and bishops, and 
bulls and interdicts, canon law and decretals, so that in all this 
upholstery there is great risk that none of us see the shrine. So 
of the poor little parodies of the Roman Church, the Anglican 
Church, the Lutheran Church, and the rest of them." 

Again : 

"All our brethren in the other confessions plunge into their 
infinite ocean with this hamper of corks and floats, water-proof 
dresses lest they be wet, oil-cloth caps for their hair, flannels for 
decency, a bathing-cart here, a well-screened awning there — so 
much machinery before the bath that one hardly wonders if some 
men refuse to swim ! For them there is this great apology if 



The Church and the Age. 295 



they do not proclaim, as we must proclaim, God here and God 
now ; nay, if they do not live, as we must live, in the sense of 
God here and God now. For us, we have no excuse. We have 
stripped off every rag. We have destroyed all the machin- 
ery." 

The Rev. Mr. Hale regards the seven sacra- 
ments, the hierarchy, the canon law — briefly, the 
entire visible and practical side of the Church — 
as a " hamper,'' " machinery," "rags," and thinks 
there " is great risk that none of us see the 
shrine." The difficulty here is not where Mr. Hale 
places it. 

"Night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing." 

The visible is not the prison of the invisible, as 
Plato dreamed, but its vehicle, as St. Paul teaches. 
" For the invisible things of God, from the crea- 
tion of the world, are clearly seen, being understood 
by the things that are made, His eternal power also 
and divinity." * The author of this sermon is 
at least consistent in his error ; as he believes in 
an abstract God, so he would reduce " the Church 
of the living God," " the body of Christ," to an 
abstract or non-existence. Suppose, for example, 
that the Rev. Edward E. Hale had reduced "all 
the machinery " of his own curiously-devised body 
to an abstraction before the Unitarian biennial 
conference was held at Saratoga ; the world would 
have been deprived of the knowledge of that 



Romans i. 20. 



296 The Church and the Age. 



" simplicity which it is the special duty of v the 
Unitarian Church to proclaim." Think of the 
loss ! For it was by means of the complex " ma- 
chinery " of his concrete body that the Rev. E. 
E. Hale came in contact with the " machinery " 
of the Unitarian biennial organization at Saratoga, 
and, thus "upholstered," he publicly rants against 
all " machinery." 

There may be too complex an organization, 
and too many applications of it, and too much 
made of these, owing to the necessities of our times, 
in the Catholic Church, to suit the personal tastes 
and the advanced stage of growth of the Rev. 
Edward E. Hale. But the Catholic Church does 
not exist solely for the benefit of Mr. Hale, or for 
any peculiar class of men, or any one race alone. 
He has and should have, and they all have, 
their own place and appropriate niche in her all- 
temple ; for the Catholic Church takes up in her 
scope every individual and the human race entire. 
But there are others, with no less integrity of spirit- 
ual life and intelligence than he, who esteem those 
things of which he speaks so unappreciatingly as 
heavenly gifts and straight pathways to see more 
clearly the inner shrine and approach more nearly 
to the divine Presence. Are the idiosyncrasies 
of one man, though " thoroughly furnished and 
widely experienced," to be the norm of all other 



The Church and the Age. 297 



men, and of every race ? Men and races differ 
greatly in these things, and the Church of God is 
not a sect or conventicle; she is Catholic, universal, 
and in her bosom, and in her bosom alone, every 
soul finds its own place and most suitable way, 
and this with personal liberty and in accord with 
all other souls and the whole universe, to perfect 
union with God. 

The difficulty with the Rev. E. E Hale is, he 
has missed his vocation. His place evidently was 
not in the assembled conference at Saratoga ; for 
his calling is unmistakably to a hermit life. Let 
him hie to the desert, and there, in a forlorn and 
naked hermitage, amid " frosts and fasts, hard 
lodgings and thin weeds/' in an austere and un- 
sociable life, " unswathed and unclothed," in puris 
naturalibiis, " triumphantly cease to be." The 
Rev. E. E. Hale is one-sided, and seems to have 
no idea that the Catholic Church is the organi- 
zation of that perfect communion of men with 
God and each other which Christ came to com- 
municate and to establish in its fulness upon 
earth, and is its practical realization. God grant 
him, and others like him, this light and know- 
ledge ! 

But we would not have our readers think that 
all Unitarians agree with the Rev. E. E. Hale 
in his estimate of the visible or practical side of 



298 The Church and the Age. 



the Church. We quote from a leading article 

in the Liberal Cliristian, under the head of " Spirit 

and Form in Religion, " the following passage : 

"It seems painfully indicative of the still undeveloped con- 
dition of our race that no truce or medium can be approxi- 
mated in which the two great factors of human nature and 
society, the authority and supremacy of spirit and the ne- 
cessity and usefulness of forni, are reconciled and made to 
serve each other or a common end. Must inward spiritual- 
ity, and outward expression of it in forms and worship, be 
for ever in a state of unstable equilibrium ? Must they ever 
be hostile and at cross-purposes? Must all progress be by 
a displacement in turn of each other — now an era of hon- 
ored forms and then of only disembodied spirituality? There 
is probably no entire escape from this necessity. But surely 
he is the wisest man who can hold this balance in the evenest 
hand ; and that sect or school, whether political, social, or reli- 
gious, that pays the finest justice and the most impartial re- 
spect to the two factors in our nature, spirit and form, will 
hold the steadiest place and do the most good for the long- 
est time. This is the real reason why Quakerism, with 
all its exalted claims to respect, has such a feeble and di- 
minishing importance. It has oil in the lamp of the purest 
kind, but almost no wick, and what wick it has is made 
up of its thee-ing and thou-mg, and its straight coat and 
stiff bonnet. These are steadily losing authority ; and when 
they are abandoned, visible Quakerism will disappear. On 
the other hand. Roman Catholicism maintains its place against 
the spirit of the age, and in spite of a load of discredited 
doctrines, very largely because of its intense persistency in 
forms, its highly-illumined visibility, its large-handed legible- 
ness ; but not without the unfailing aid and support of a spirit 
of faith and worship which produces a devoted priesthood and 
hosts of genuine saints. No form of Christianity can boast of 
lovelier or more spiritual disciples, or reaches higher up or lower 
down, including the wisest and the most ignorant, the most 
delicate and the coarsest adherents. It has the subtlest and 
the bluntest weapons in its arsenal, and can pierce with a 
needle, or mow with a scythe, or maul with a mattock." 



The Church and the Age. 299 



The same organ, in a later number, in speaking 
of the Saratoga conference, says: 

"The main characteristic of the meeting was a conscientious 
and reverent endeavor to attain to something like a scientific 
basis for our faith in absolute religion, and in Christianity as 
a consistent and concrete expression of it," 

and adds that the opening sermon of the Rev. 
Mr. Hale " had the merit of starting us calmly 
and unexcitedly on our course." Our readers 
will form their own judgment about what direc- 
tion the course leads on which the Rev. Edward 
E. Hale started the Unitarians assembled at Sara- 
toga in their seeking after a " scientific basis " 
for " absolute religion, and Christianity as a con- 
crete expression of it " ! 



XII. 



THE TRANSCENDENTAL MOVEMENT 
IN NEW ENGLAND * 



HIS volume reads pleasantly. There is at- 
tached to it a peculiar interest, and some- 
thing of the charm of a romance, for those who 
have had some knowledge of the transcendental 
movement in New England and acquaintance 
with its leaders. The author has evidently writ- 
ten his account with feelings of sympathy and 
friendship, which he acknowledges, and these have 
led him to bring out all the good points of the 
movement, while its shortcomings, exaggerations, 
and absurdities are scarcely if at all hinted at. 
The style is clear and smooth, the narrative never 
falters ; the writer has contrived to throw a cer- 
tain halo around the leaders of transcendentalism, 



* Transcendentalism in A T ew England: AHistory. By Octavius 
Brooks F:othingham. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1876. 

30° 




The Church and the Age. 301 



and succeeded in presenting in his book a series 
of ideal portraits calculated to impose somewhat 
upon strangers. 

The author has not written a history, but an 
interesting sketch which will be useful, no doubt, 
to some future historian. To write a history, 
especially of a philosophical and religious move- 
ment such as transcendentalism pretended to be 
and really was, requires more than an acquaintance 
with persons and facts. One must comprehend 
its real origin, and have mastered and become 
familiar with his subject. This is a task which 
Mr. Frothingham has not accomplished. 

Every heresy segregates its adherents from the 
straight line of the true progress of the human 
race, all deviations from which are, in the na- 
ture of things, either temporary or fatal. They 
live, for the greater part, outside of the cumulat- 
ed wisdom and the broad stream of the con- 
tinuous life of humanity. When the heresy has 
almost exhausted its derived life — for no heresy 
has a source of life in itself — and the symptoms 
of its approaching death begin to appear, the 
intelligent and sincere who are born in it are 
the first, at this stage of its career, to seek to 
regain the unbroken unity of truth. This is 
reached by two distinct and equally legitimate 
ways. The first class gains the knowledge of 



302 The Church and the Age. 



the whole body of the originally revealed truth, 
from which its heresy cut it off, by tracing 
the truths retained by the sect to their logical 
connection with other no less important truths 
equally contained in the same divine revelation. 
The second class falls back u-pon the essential 
truths of natural reason ; and as all supernatu- 
ral truth finds a support in natural truth, it 
follows that the denial of any of the former 
involves an injury to the latter. Heresy is al- 
ways a denial of one or more of the truths of 
divine revelation, and — a matter of much impor- 
tance — always involves a mutilation of man's nat- 
ural reason. Once the integral natural basis re- 
covered, the repudiation of heresy as contrary 
to reason follows logically. But the experience 
of the human race, that of the transcendental- 
ists included, shows plainly that nature does 
not suffice nature ; and this class, at this mo- 
ment, starts out to find a religion consonant with 
the dictates of reason, satisfactory to all their 
spiritual necessities, and adequate to their whole 
nature. They ask, and rightly, for a religion 
which shall find fast foundations in the human 
breast. This appeal can only be answered, and 
is only met, by the revelation given to the 
world in the beginning by the Author of man, 
completed in the Incarnation, and existing in its 



The Church and the Age. 303 



entirety and in unbroken historical continuity in 
the Catholic Church alone. 

This dialectical law has governed the course 
of all heresies, from which they could not by 
any possibility escape ; the same law has gov- 
erned the history of Protestantism on its native 
soil, in Germany, as well in old as in New 
England, and wherever it has obtained a foot- 
hold. 

Our business at present is with those of the 
second class, under which head come our New 
England transcendentalists ; and what is not a 
little amusing is the simplicity with which they 
proclaim to the world, in this nineteenth century 
of the Christian era, the truths of natural reason, 
as though these were new and original discover- 
ies ! They appear to fancy that the errors of 
Calvinism, the petty sect to which they formerly 
adhered, and their dreary experience of its rule, 
have been the sad lot of the whole human race ! 
It is as if a body of men had been led astray 
into a cavern where the direct rays of the sun 
never penetrated, and, after the lapse of some 
generations, their descendants approach its mouth, 
breathe the fresh air, behold the orb of light, the 
mountains, the rivers, and the whole earth cov- 
ered with trees, flowers, and verdure. For the 
first time this glorious world, in all its won- 



304 The Church and the Age. 



dcrful beauty, bursts upon their view, and, in 
the candor of their souls, they flatter them- 
selves that they alone are privileged with this 
vision, and knowledge, and enjoyment ! So of 
transcendentalists. Their language — but, be it 
understood, in their sober moods — affects those 
whose mental sight has not been obscured by 
heresy somewhat like the speech of children 
when first the light of reason dawns in their 
souls. For the transcendental movement in New 
England was nothing else, in. its first instance, 
than the earnest and righteous protest of our 
native reason in convalescence against a false 
Christianity on account of its absurd dogmas and 
its denial or neglect of rational truths. 

Mr. Frothingham tells us that " he was once 
a pure transcendentalism'* and that perhaps "his 
ardor may have cooled. " We protest-; and as 
a disinterested party we assure him that he 
writes with all the glow of youth, and in his 
volume he has furnished a pretty cabinet-picture, 
in couleur du rose, of transcendentalism in New 
England, without betraying even so much as 
the least sign of a suspicion of its true place in 
the ^history either of philosophy or religion. In 
seeking for the " distinct origin " of transcenden- 
talism he traces it to the teachings of Kant, Cou- 
sin, Coleridge, and Carlyle. 



The Church and the Age. 



305 



The contact with the productions of these for- 
eign philosophers as well as religious and lite- 
rary writers undoubtedly stimulated and strength- 
ened the transcendental movement in New Eng- 
land ; but it did not originate it. The movement 
was the spontaneous growth of the New Eng- 
land mind, in accordance with the law which we 
have stated, aided by the peculiar influence of 
our political institutions, as will be shown further 
on. Its real authors were Channing, Alcott, and 
Emerson, who were neither affected at their start 
nor afterward — or but slightly, if at all — by for- 
eign or extraneous influences. 

Moreover, the Kantian philosophy afforded no 
logical foothold for the defence of the movement 
in New England. Were our New-Englander, 
who still clings to his early faith in transcenden- 
tal ideas, to present himself to the philosophical 
offspring of Kant, he would no more pass mus- 
ter than his old orthodox Protestant antagonist 
of the exclusive traditional school. The logical 
descendants of Kant are, in the region of phi- 
losophy, to use an Americanism, played out, and 
those who still keep up an existence will be 
found in the ranks of positivism, materialism, and 
blank atheism. 

The idea of God, the immortality of the soul, 
the liberty of the will, the creation of the world — 



3o6 



The Church and the Age. 



these and all such ideas the descendants of Kant 
have politely conducted to the frontiers of philoso- 
phy, and dismissed each and every one, but not 
before courteously thanking them for their provi- 
sional services. Our New-Englander would ap- 
pear to their eyes as a babe still in swaddling- 
clothes, or as a child learning to read by amus- 
ing itself with the pictures of old Mother 
Goose stories. Whatever hankering Mr. Froth- 
ingham and some few others may have after 
their first love of transcendental ideas — and those 
in New England with whom they are most in 
sympathy, one and all, are moving in the same 
direction — they are only in the initial stage of 
the process of evolution of the Kantian germ- 
cell, the product of Protestant protoplasm, and 
will end eventually in the same logical issues as 
their less sentimental German, French, and Eng- 
lish confreres. 

To give us a right history of transcendentalism, 
Mr. Frothingham must enlarge the horizon of his 
mental vision, and include within its scope a 
stretch of time which elapsed before his ances- 
tors were led off by heresy into the cavern of 
obscurity. He will find a historical no less than 
a " dialectical basis " for its ideas or primary 
truths, and for other truths of natural reason of 
which he has not yet made the discovery, in the 



The Church and the Age. 307 



writings of Clement of Alexandria, in Augustine, 
in Vincent of Lerins, in Anselm ; and he will 
find it above ' all in Thomas of Aquin, whose 
pages contain all the truths, but purified from 
the admixture of error, of the pagan philoso- 
phers, as also of those who had preceded him 
in Christian philosophy — men whose natural 
gifts, as well as devotion to truth, were compar- 
able, to say the least, with Immanuel Kant and his 
French, or English, or American disciples. Those 
profound thinkers maintained and demonstrated 
the truth of the great ideas which Kant, accord- 
ing to his own showing, neither dared affirm nor 
deny, and which the transcendentalists held for 
the most part without knowing exactly why. 
What those great men taught from the beginning 
has been always taught, even to our day, by 
all sound Catholic teachers in philosophy. So 
jealous has the supreme authority of the Church 
been in this matter of upholding the value of 
the natural powers of human reason against 
those who would exalt tradition at its expense or 
destroy its value by scepticism, that she has 
required, if they would teach philosophy in her 
name, as a test of their orthodoxy, a subscription 
to the following proposition : " Reason can with 
certitude demonstrate the existence of God, the 
spirituality of the soul, and the liberty of man." 



308 The Church and the Age. 



Had the author of the volume which we are 
briefly reviewing read the Summa of St. Thomas, 
or only the chapters which treat of these subjects, 
and understood them — which is not, we hope, 
asking too much from an advanced thinker of 
our enlightened age, inasmuch as St. Thomas 
wrote this work in the " dark ages " for mere 
tyros — he would have gained a standpoint from 
which he might have done what he tells us in 
his preface was " the one purpose of his book — • 
to define the fundamental ideas of philosophy, 
to trace them to their historical and speculative 
sources, and to show whither they tended " 
(p. viii.) Such a work would have been more 
creditable to his learning, more worthy of his 
intellectual effort, more satisfactory to intelligent 
readers, and one of permanent value. We com- 
mend to Octavius Brooks Frothingham the pe- 
rusal and study of St. Thomas' Summa — above 
all, his work Contra Gentiles, which is a defence 
of Christianity on the basis of human reason 
against the attacks of those who do not admit 
of its divine revelation ; or if these be not 
within his reach, to take up any one of the 
modern works on philosophy taught in Catholic 
colleges or seminaries to our young men. 

After all, perhaps, the task might prove an 
ungracious one ; for it would not be flattering 



The Church and the Age. 309 



to the genius of originality, on which our trans- 
cendentalists pride themselves, to discover that 
these utterances of theirs concerning the value 
of human reason, the dignity of the soul, and the 
worth of man — barring occasional extravagant 
expressions attributable to the heat of youth — 
were but echoes of the voice of the Catholic 
Church of all ages, of the traditional teachings 
of her philosophers, especially of the Jesuitical 
school; all of which, be it said between ourselves, 
has been confirmed by the sacred decrees of the 
recent Vatican Council ! , Still, passing this act 
of humiliation on their part, it would have 
afforded them what our author says their sys- 
tem " lacked," and for which he has had re- 
course — in our opinion in vain — to the great Ger- 
man systems : namely, a " dialectical basis." He 
would have found in Catholic philosophy solid 
grounds to sustain every truth which the trans- 
cendentalists so enthusiastically proclaimed in 
speech, in poetry and prose, and which truths, 
in their practical aspect, not a few of them made 
noble and heroic sacrifices to realize. 

To have secured such a basis would not have 
been a small gain, when one considers that these 
primary truths of reason are the sources from 
which religion, morals, political government, and 
human society draw their vitality, strength, and 



310 The Church and the Age. 



stability. Not a small service to humanity is 
it to make clear these imperishable foundations, 
to render them intelligible to all, and transmit 
them to posterity with increased life and 
strength. It is well that this noble task of 
philosophy did not depend on the efforts of the 
transcendentalists ; for Mr. Frothingham sadly 
informs us in his preface that "as a form of men- 
tal philosophy transcendentalism may have had 
its day ; at any rate it is no longer in the 
ascendant, and at present is manifestly on the 
decline, being suppressed by the philosophy of 
experience, which, under different names, is tak- 
ing possession of the speculative world " (p. vii.) 
Who knows what might have been the precious 
fruits of all the high aspiration and powerful 
earnestness which were underlying this move- 
ment, if, instead of seeking for the " dialectical 
basis of the great German systems," its leaders 
had cast aside their prejudices, and found that 
Catholic philosophy which had interpreted the 
divine oracles of the soul from age to age, con- 
sonant with man's original and everlasting convic- 
tions, and sustaining his loftiest and noblest 
hopes ? 

But with the best will in the world to look 
favorably on the practical results of the transcen- 
dental movement, and with sincere appreciation 



The Church and the Age. 



of its leaders — for the effort was praiseworthy and 
the men were highly gifted — a feeling of sadness 
steals over us in reading this book, and we can- 
not help exclaiming with the poet Sterling : 

11 O wasted strength ! O light and calm 

And better hopes so vainly given ! 
Like rain upon the herbless sea, 

Poured down by too benignant Heaven — 
We see not stars unfixed by winds, 

Or lost in aimless thunder peals, 
But man's large soul, the star supreme, 

In guideless whirl how oft it reels !" 

But this is not to be wondered at ; for although 
these men had arrived at the perception of cer- 
tain great truths, they held them by no strong 
intellectual grasp, and finally they suffered them 
to escape. Their intellectual fabric was the house 
built upon sand ; when the storm came and 
the winds blew, it fell, and great was the fall 
thereof. This was the history of Brook Farm 
and Fruitlands, communities in which the two 
wings of transcendentalism attempted to reduce 
their ideas into practice. Here let us remark it 
would have increased the interest of the volume 
if its author had given to his readers the pro- 
gramme of Brook Farm, " The Idea of Jesus of 
Society, " together with its constitutions. It is 
short, interesting, and burning with earnestness. 
There is, besides, scarcely any account of the sin- 



312 The Church and the Age. 

gular enterprise of the group of idealists at Fruit- 
lands ; and the name of Henry Thoreau, one of the 
notables among transcendentalists, is barely men- 
tioned, while to his life at Walden Pond there 
is not even an allusion. True, these experiments 
were, like Brook Farm, unsuccessful, but they 
were not without interest and significance, and are 
worthy of a place in what claims to be a history 
of the movement that gave rise to them ; at least 
space enough might have been afforded them 
for a suitable epitaph. 

We will now redeem our promise of showing 
how the influence of our political institutions 
aided in producing what goes by the name of 
transcendentalism. But before doing this we 
must settle what transcendentalism is ; for our 
author appears to make a distinction between 
idealism and transcendentalism in New England. 
Here is what he says : 

" There was idealism in New England prior to the introduc- 
tion of transcendentalism. Idealism is of no clime or age. It 
has its proportion of disciples in every period and in the 
apparently most uncongenial countries ; a full proportion 
might have been looked for in New England. But when 
Emerson appeared the name of idealism was legion. He 
alone was competent to form a school, and as soon as he 
rose the scholars trooped about him. By sheer force of 
genius Emerson anticipated the results of the transcendental 
philosophy, defined its axioms, and ran out their inferences 
to the end. Without help from abroad, or with such help 
only as none but he could use, he might have domesticated 



The Chureji and the Age. 



in Massachusetts an idealism as heroic as Fichte's, as beau- 
tiful as Schelling's, but it would have lacked the dialectical 
basis of the great German systems " (p. 115). 

If we seize the meaning of this passage, it is 
admitted that previous to the knowledge of the 
German systems Mr. Emerson had already de- 
fined the axioms, run out their inferences to the 
end, and anticipated the results of the German 
transcendental philosophy. But this is all that 
any system of philosophy pretends to accomplish ; 
and therefore, by his own showing, the distinc- 
tion between idealism and transcendentalism is 
a distinction without a difference. 

Mr. Frothingham, however, tells us on ' the 
same page that " transcendentalism, properly so- 
called, was imported in foreign packages " ; and 
Mr. Frothingham ought to know, for he was 
once, he tell us, " a pure transcendentalist " ; and 
on pages 128 and 136 he criticises Mr. Emerson, 
who identifies idealism and transcendentalism. 
With the genius and greatness of the prince of 
the transcendentalists before his eyes, our author, 
as is proper, employs the following condescend- 
ing language: ."It is audacious to criticise Mr. 
Emerson on a point like this ; but candor com- 
pels the remark that the above description does 
less than justice to the definiteness of the tran- 
scendental movement. It was something more 



The Church and the Age. 



than a reaction against formalism and tradition, 
though it took that form. It was more than a 
reaction against Puritan orthodoxy, though in 
part it was that. It was in a very small degree 
due to study of the ancient pantheists, of Plato 
and the Alexandrians, of Plutarch, Seneca, and 
Epictetus, though one or two of the leaders had 
drunk deeply from these sources. Transcenden- 
talism was a distinct philosophical system " (p. 

136). 

So far so good. Here is the place, if the 
author knows what he is talking about, to give 
us in clear terms the definition of transcenden- 
talism as a distinct philosophical system. But 
what does he do ? Does he satisfy our anticipa- 
tions ? Mr. Emerson, be it understood, does not 
know what transcendentalism is ! Well, hear 
our author, w 7 ho thinks he does. He continues : 
" Practically it was an assertion of the inalien- 
able worth of man ; theoretically it was an as- 
sertion of the immanence of divinity in instinct, 
the transference of supernatural attributes to 
the natural constitution of mankind. . . . Through 
all was the belief in the living God In the soul, 
faith in immediate inspiration, in boundless possi- 
bility, and in unimaginable good " (p. 137). Or- 
dinarily when writers attempt to give a defini- 
tion, or convey information of a " distinct philo- 



The Church and the Age. 315 



sophical system," they give one to understand 
its first principles or axioms, its precise method, 
and its important conclusions, and particularly 
wherein it differs in these respects from other 
systems of philosophy. This is what Mr. Froth- 
ingham in the passage last quoted has led us to 
expect ; but instead of this he gives to the 
reader mere " assertions " and " beliefs." And 
these assertions and beliefs every one knows who 
has heard Dr. Channing, or Mr. Emerson, or 
Mr. Alcott, or who has a slight acquaintance 
with their writings, to have been the sources of 
inspiration in their speech, which appear on al- 
most every page they have written ! Proof is 
needless ; for there is no one who will venture 
a contradiction on this point. The men who 
were most influenced by the study of the philo- 
sophers abroad were neither the originators nor 
leaders of the so-called transcendental move- 
ment in New England — Brownson, Parker, and 
William Channing. Mr. Frothingham, we sub- 
mit, has not made out his case, and has given 
too much credit w T here it was not due, while 
robbing others of their just merit, whatever that 
may be. If " transcendentalism was a distinct 
philosophical system," nowhere in his book has 
this been shown. 

Transcendentalism, accepting the author's state- 



3 1 6 The Church and the Age. 



ment as to its .true character, was never a phi- 
losophical system in New England ; and had its 
early disciples been content to cultivate the 
seeds sown by its true leaders, instead of making 
the futile attempt to transfer to our clime exotics 
from Germany which would not take root and 
grow in our soil, we should have had, in place 
of a dreary waste, stately trees whose wholesome 
and delicious fruits would now refresh us. 

And now for our reasons why it was native 
to the soil from which it sprang. If we analyze 
the political system of our country we shall 
find at its base the maxim, " Man is capable of 
self-government. ,, The American system exhibits 
a greater trust in the natural capacities and the 
inherent worth of man than any other form of 
political government now upon this earth. Hence 
all the great political trusts are made elective ; 
hence also our recourse to short terms of office 
and the great extension among us of the elective 
franchise. The genius and whole drift and 
current of our political life runs in this direction. 
Now, what does this maxim mean, that " Man 
is capable of self-government " ? It means that 
man is endowed by his Creator with reason to 
know what is right, true, and good. It means 
that man possesses free-will and can follow the 
right, true, and good. These powers constitute 



Tlie C Jui rcli and the Age. 317 



man a responsible being. It supposes that man 
as he is now born is in possession of all his 
natural rights, and the primal tendencies of his 
native faculties are in accordance with the 
great end of his existence, and his nature is es- 
sentially good. But such views of human nature 
are in direct opposition to the fundamental 
doctrines of Puritanism and orthodox Protest- 
antism. These taught and teach that man is 
born totally depraved, that his nature is essen- 
tially corrupt, and all his actions, springing from 
his nature, nothing but evil. Now, the political 
influence of our American institutions stimulated 
the assertion of man's natural rights, his noble 
gift of liberty, and his inalienable worth, while 
the religion peculiar to New England preached 
precisely the contrary. So that at the Revolution 
the political and religious principles of the New- 
Englander entered upon a conflict with each 
other, and in the long run the ballot-box beat the 
pulpit. For the former exerted its influence six 
days in the week, while the latter had for its 
share only the Sabbath. In other, words, the 
inevitable tendency of our American political 
system is to efface from the minds of our people 
all the distinctive dogmas of the orthodox Pro- 
testant views of Christianity by placing them on 
a platform in accordance with man's natural 



3 1 8 The CJmrch and the Age. 



capacities, his native dignity, and with right and 
honorable views of God. Herein lies the true 
genesis of Unitarianism and its cogenitor, the 
transcendental movement in New England. 

Dr. Channing was right in discarding the at- 
tempt to introduce the worse than idle specu- 
lation of the German and French philosophical 
systems in New England. " He considered/' so 
says his biographer, " pretensions to absolute 
science quite premature ; saw more boastfulness 
than wisdom in ancient and modern schemes of 
philosophy ; and was not a little amused at the 
complacent confidence with which quite evident- 
ly fallible theorists assumed to stand at the 
centre, and to scan and depict the panorama of 
existence. " " The transcendentalists, " he tells 
James Martineau in 1841, " in identifying them- 
selves a good deal with Cousin's crude system, 
have lost the life of an original movement." 
In this last sentence Dr. Channing not only an- 
ticipated history but also uttered a prophecy. 

But how about a philosophy whose mission 
it is to maintain all the great truths for which 
he so eloquently and manfully fought ? How 
about a conception of Christianity which places 
itself in evident relations with human nature 
and the- history of the universe ? — a religion 
which finds its sanctuary in man's soul, and 



The Church and the Age. 319 

aims at the elevation of his finite reason to its 
archetype and its transformation into the Infi- 
nite Reason ? 

Unitarianism in New England owes its exist- 
ence to the mistaken supposition that Calvinism is 
a true and genuine interpretation of Christianity. 
" Total depravity," " election," " reprobation," 
" atonement," etc., followed, it was fancied, each 
other logically, and there was no denying one 
without the denial of all. And as it was sup- 
posed that these doctrines found their support 
in that of the divinity of Christ, the denial of 
the divinity of Christ followed as a matter of 
course. Men had grown to detest so heartily 
the " five points " of Calvinism that they pre- 
ferred rather to be pagans than suckled in such 
a creed. But why did they not study the phi- 
losophy of the Catholic schools? Catholicity was 
represented in New England* Is it probable, is 
it reasonable to suppose that our New-England- 
ers, who have a strong vein of earnest religious 
feeling in their nature, would have gone across 
the ocean among the will-o'-the-wisps of the 
realms of thought to find a support for the great 
truths which they were so enthusiastic in affirm- 
ing, when at their very doors was " the Church 
which has revealed more completely man to him- 
self, taken possession of his inclinations, of his 



320 The Church and the Age. 

lasting and universal convictions, laid bare to 
the light those ancient foundations, has cleansed 
them from every stain, from every alien mixture, 
and honored them by recognizing their impress 
of the Divinity " ? 

But Mr. Frothingham tells us : " The religion 
of New England was Protestant and of the most 
intellectual type. Romanism had no hold on the 
thinking people of Boston. None besides the 
Irish laboring and menial classes were Catholics, 
and their religion was regarded as the lowest 
form of ceremonial superstition " (p. 107) ; and 
almost in the same breath he informs his readers 
that " the Unitarians of New England were good 
scholars, accomplished men of letters, humane in 
sentiment and sincere and moral in intention " 
(p. no). Is Octavius Brooks Frothingham ac- 
quainted with all " the ceremonial superstitions " 
upon this earth, and does he honestly believe 
that the Catholic religion is " the lowest form " 
of them all ? Or — what is the same thing — does 
he think that the " good scholars and accom- 
plished men of letters " of New England thought 
so? Perhaps such was his impression, but that 
it was common to this class of men we emphati- 
cally deny. No one stood higher among them 
than Dr. Channing, and his estimate of the 
Catholic religion was certainly not the same as 



The Church and the Age. 321 



Mr. Frothingham's. It would be difficult to find 
in a non-Catholic writer a higher appreciation of 
her services to humanity, and more eloquent de- 
scriptions of certain aspects of the Catholic 
Church, than may be found in his writings. Mr. 
Frothingham ought to know this, and only the 
limits of our article hinder us from citing several 
such instances. Is he aware that President John 
Adams headed the subscription-list to build the 
first Catholic church in Boston ? Our author, by 
his prejudices, his lack of insight, and limited in- 
formation, does injustice to the New England 
people, depreciates the intelligence and honesty 
of the leaders in Unitarianism, and fails to grasp 
the deep significance of the transcendental move- 
ment. 

He does injustice to the people of Boston 
especially, who, when they heard of the death of 
the saintly Bishop Cheverus, tolled the bells of 
the churches of their city to show in what vene- 
ration they held his memory ; and, if he was not 
of the age to have listened, he must have read 
the eloquent and appreciative eulogium preached 
by Dr. Channing on this great and good man. 
And Bishop Cheverus was the guide and teacher 
of the religion of the Irish people of Boston ! 

Mr. Frothingham will not attempt to make a 
distinction between the " Catholic religion " and 



322 



The Church and the Age. 



" the religion of the Irish menial and laboring 
classes " — a subterfuge of which* no man of intelli- 
gence and integrity would be guilty. The Irish 
people — be it said to their glory — have from the 
beginning of their conversion to Christianity kept 
the pure light of Catholic faith unsullied by any 
admixture of heresy, and have remained firm in 
their obedience to the divine authority of the 
Holy Church, in spite of the tyranny, of the bit- 
terest persecution of its enemies, and all their 
efforts of bribery or any worldly inducements 
which they might hold out. When our searchers 
after true religion shall have exhausted by their 
long and weary studies Zoroaster, Pythagoras, 
Svenalis, Plato, Epictetus, Brahma, Buddha, Con- 
fucius, Mahomet, and any other notable inventor 
of philosophy or religion ; when they have gath- 
ered up all the truths scattered among the differ- 
ent heresies in religion since the Christian era, the 
end of all their labors will only make this truth 
the plainer : that the Catholic Church resumes 
the authority of all religions from the begin- 
ning of the world, affirms the traditions and con- 
victions of the whole human race, and unites, 
co-ordinates, and binds together all the scattered 
truths contained in every religious system in an 
absolute, universal, divine synthesis. 



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The prices quoted in this Catalogue are the 
figures at which the book sells at retail. 

To the Trade and any one buying in quanti- 
ties large discounts are offered. 

Special discounts on orders accompanied by 
CASH. 

We prefer to do a Cash business. 



Non-Catholic Missions. 

What they are. How to give them. 

BY REV. WALTER ELLIOTT, 

Paulist Missionary. 

Paper, 17s PP'> *o cents. 

This book is the manual of the' NEW MOVEMENT, which 
has manifested itself so energetically in giving MISSIONS TO 
NON-CATHOLICS. It should be read by every priest and en- 
terprising layman in the country. Send 10 cents in stamps to 
cover postage and it will be mailed to you. 



Christian Unity. 

By Rev. Morgan M. Sheedy. 

120 pages. Cloth, 50 cents. 

A new book on one of the most attractive topics of the day. 
The days of theological scalping have gone by. The best minds 
are eagerly discussing the REUNION of CHRISTENDOM. Fa- 
ther Sheedy in his clear, incisive way suggests a new way to Chris- 
tian Unity. 

Eucharistic Conferences. 

231 pages, Illustrated, Cloth, 50 cents. 

These are a series of thoughtful and very well prepared papers 
originally read at the first American Eucharistic Congress. They 
cover many phases of Eucharistic devotion and thought. 



CATHOLIC BOOK EXCHANGE, 120 West 60th St., New York. 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT COUN- 
TRIES COMPARED 



in Civilization, Popular Happiness, General Intelli- 
gence, and Morality. 

By Alfred Young, Paulist. 
636 pages, cloth, $1. 

A common argument against the Divinity of the Church is i 
see its demoralizing; influence on the civilization of Catholic 
countries. Father Young covers the whole field of social ques- 
tions and completely answers all such charges. The New York 
Sun says : " Considering the scope of Father Young's book and 
the extraordinary amount of research required by it, we do not 
hesitate to pronounce it the strongest piece of controversial lit- 
erature upon the Catholic side that has been put forth in recent 
times." 

CATHOLIC BELIEF. 

A Short and Simple Exposition of Catholic Doctrine, 
By Rev. J. Faa Di Bruno. 
433 P a g es > paper, 20 cents. 

The best-known compendium of the teachings of the Church. 
A book for the million. Bishops need it for missionary work 
among non-Catholics. Priests need it in instructing Converts. 
People need it as a handy manual of Christian Doctrine. Dis- 
count for large quantities. 

DIVINE ARMORY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 

By Rev. Kenelm Vaughan ; with a preface by 
Cardinal Gibbons. 

In leather, five books in one volume. 

1,028 pages, $2. 

It is the Holy Scriptures arranged for devotional as well as 
preaching purposes, for the intelligent laity as well as for priests. 
It classifies the text of Scripture under appropriate headings, 
making an admirably digested Concordance. We have nothing 
like it in a Catholic English dress. It will serve nicely as a hand- 
book in the revival of Scripture Studies, and is coming largely in- 
to vogue among intelligent lay people as a Prayer-Book of un- 
usual value, since it enables one to pray in the words of the Holy 
Ghost. 



The Catholic Book Exchange, 120 West 60th St., New York. 



LIFE OF FATHER HECKER, 

Founder of the Paulists. 
By Rev. Walter Elliott. Introduction by Most Rev. 
John Ireland, D.D. 
444 pages, cloth, $1. 

A full-sized literary portrait of a great leader of men. Father 
Hecker was the prophet of the new dispensation, which is so hap- 
pily advocated by Leo XIII., of bringing the Church into harmony 
with the legitimate aspirations of the age. The book expresses 
in his own words his hopes for the conversion of America. It is 
the life-story of one of the most prominent ecclesiastics in the 
American Church. 

THE OXFORD MOVEMENT IN 
AMERICA ; 

or, Glimpses of Life in an Anglican Seminary. 
By Rev. Clarence A. Walworth, 

Author of " Gentle Skeptic" " Andiatorocte" etc. 

175 pages, cloth, $1. 

A most intensely interesting personal narrative of the rise of 
latter-day Episcopalianism. Father Walworth was a student a' 
the General Theological Seminary when the Oxford Movemen 
was in full swing. Many names well known to-day were in th< 
list also. The part these actors took in the play is related by ont 
who was on the stage, and knew them all thoroughly. In a 
simple yet kindly way he, tells many tales out of school. 



FIVE MINUTE SERMONS. 

Volume I. New Series. 
By the Paulists. 
516 pages, cloth, $1 each. 

This volume contains the Gospel and Epistle for each Sun- 
day of the year and three well-selected, practical, and pointed 
Sermonettes for the Low Masses. The advantage of this collec- 
tion is that the sermons are by practical preachers, have been 
actually preached, and after careful revision are now offered to the 
Clergy. This is an entirely new volume, the sermons have 
never been published before in book-form. It makes an excellent 
manual for use on the altar. 

Volumes I. and II., old series, can be supplied at $1 each. 



The Catholic Book Exchange, 120 West 60th St., New York, 



ASPIRATIONS OF NATURE 



By Very Rev. I. T. Hecker. 

360 pages, paper, 20 cents. 

Father Hecker in his original way argues himself in this 
work, from a basis which supposes the religious instinct, into the 
Catholic Church, where this instinct receives its fullest develop- 
ment. It is a most valuable book to an intelligent man who has 
drifted away from all organized religion. 



ANDIATORO CTE ; 

or, The Eve of Lady Day on Lake George ; and other 
Poems, Hymns, and Meditations in Verse, 

By Rev. Father Walworth, of Albany, Y. 

240 pages, cloth, gilt edges, $1. 

Father Walworth has written poetry of very high merit. 
This co lection of his life poems includes his best creations. 
Many are racy of the soil, some bespeak the poetry of Indian 
legend, still others are born of a deep religious nature. 



CHURCH AND THE AGE. 

An Exposition of the Catholic Church in view of 
the Needs and Aspirations of the present Age. 
By Very Rev. I. T. Hecker. 
322 pages, cloth, $1. 

An epoch-making book. One cannot well understand the 
signs of the times and the outcome of the new dispensation with- 
out getting Father Hecker's views. It is a book to be read and 
re-read, talked over, and *.i?en read again. The relations of in- 
telligence and liberty to the religious life of the Church are here 
fully discussed. 



HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINION. 

Apologia pro Vita Sua,. 
By John Henry Cardinal Newman. 
394 pages, cloth, $1. 

This is the well-known masterpiece of polemical literature in 
which he answers in a crushing way the charges of Rev. Charles 
Kingsley. He gives in it an autobiography of his religious life. 



The Catholic Book Exchange, 120 West St, *3W York. 



PLAIN FACTS FOR FAIR MINDS. 

An Appeal to Candor and Common Sense. 
By Rev. George M. Searle, Paulist 

Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Catholic University 
of America, Washington, D.C. 

360 pages, cloth, 50 cents. 

Father Searle is a convert who knows the American mind 
well, and in this hand-book presents the truth in so taking a way 
that non-Catholics are charmed with its simple directness. It has 
also a double advantage of being prepared as an answer to the 
numerous queries coming through the 44 Question Box" on Father 
Elliott's Missions for Non-Catholics. There is no better book to 
^ive away in quantities or to use for the instruction of converts. 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RELIGION 

from the Creatio?i of the World to the present time ; 
to which is added an Historical Sketch of the 
Catholic Church in the United States, 

46 pages, paper, 10 cents. 

The study of history is the beaten track leading from reli- 
gious error to Catholic truth. The first part of this little work 
shows the unity and consistency of God's dealings with men. The 
second part, from the pen of Father Hecker, is an invincible argu- 
ment for Catholic truth drawn from its relation to our popular 
institutions. It is valuable as a text-book in Sunday-schools. 



THE INQUIRER'S CATECHISM. 

Lead, Kindly Light. Adapted from the Catechis?n 
of Rev. F. X. Reichart ; published with the 
approval of the Bishop of Salford, England. 

48 pages, paper, 5 cents. 

A short, handy, concise, and cheap manual to give to those 
who are inquiring about the Church. A supply at hand in the 
church office or confessional will satisfy the demand, and may lead 
many who come timidly to ask, into the right way. 



The Catholic Book Exchange, 120 West 60th St., New York. 



THE TEACHING OF ST. JOHN THE 

APOSTLE to the Churches of Asia and the World. 
PP-> 3^ fyll-page illustrations, cloth, $1. 
By Augustine Francis Hewit, D.D. V 

of the Congregation of St. Paul. 
This is a new translation of the writings of St. John the 
Apostle by one of the ablest scholars of the day in America, and 
it offers a specimen of an improved English version of the sacred 
canonical Scriptures. The Catholic Hierarchy of this day clasps 
the hand of St. John, on whose head rested the hand of the Lord 
Jesus Christ. From this fact, for the present needs of religious 
truth, the writings of St. John acquire much of their importance. 
Hence this new translation of them. 

LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 

By Dr. William Barry. 

75 pages, paper, 10 cents. 

It is a good summary of the larger life of Father Hecker by 
Father Elliott. It originally appeared as a critique in the Dublin 
Review. It is a European's estimate of an American and his in- 
fluence on the American Church. 

QUESTIONS OF THE SOUL. 

By Very Rev. I. T. Hecker, Paulist. 

294 pages, paper, 20 cents. 

Much that this book contains is a narrative of Father Hecker's 
attempt to solve the problems of life outside the Church and his 
failure to do so, together Vith an enthusiastic and most attractive 
description of how the Catholic Church revealed God to his thirst- 
ing soul. A well-meaning man will find herein the road to union 
with God. For those who have no positive religion this book is 
very valuable. 

MARY, THE MOTHER OF JESUS. 

By John Henry Cardinal Newman. 

136 pages, paper, 20 cents. 

This is by all odds the best statement of Catholic doctrine on 
the devotion to the Blessed Virgin in the English language. It 
was Newman's celebrated answer to Pusey. It is thorough, com- 
plete, masterly. 



The Catholic Book Exchange, 120 West 60th St., New York 



SERMONS BY THE PAULISTS. 

Preached during 1865-66. $1. 

O THER VOL UMES IN ' PRESS. 

None of these parish sermons is a long one, but they are all 
practical and have been preached to people of every-day life. 
Their charm is their directness. Many priests have found them 
extremely useful in their own pastoral labors. 

PROBLEMS OF THE AGE; 

with Studies in St. Augustine on Kindred Topics. 
By Very Rev. Augustine F. Hewit, D.D. 
440 pages, cloth, 75 cents. 

This is the best statement in English of some of the funda- 
mental questions that lie on the borderland between natural and 
revealed religions, of original sin and the problem of evil, etc. For 
one who thinks for himself we know of nothing better in English. 

Problems of the Age in paper, 287 pages, 
25 cents. 

Studies in St. Augustine in paper, 155 pa- 
ges, 25 cents. , 

THE KING'S HIGHWAY ; 

or, The Catholic Church the Way of Salvation as 
revealed in the Holy Scriptures. 
By Very Rev. A. F. Hewit, D.D. 
292 pages, cloth, 50 cents ; paper, 25 cents. 

It is the Catholic Church proved to be divine from the 
Scriptural argument. First-rate in dealing with old-fashioned 
Protestants. 

LIFE OF REV. FRANCIS A. BAKER. 

By Very Rev. A. F. Hewit, D.D. 

205 pages, cloth, 75 cents. 

Beautiful character sketch of one of the first Paulist Fathers, 
and a charming biography of a convert and a missionary. It 
contains a full history of the early beginnings of the Paulists. 



The Catholic Book Exchange, 120 West 60th St., New York. 



THE POPE: HOW FAR DOES HE 
CONTROL CONSCIENCE? 

How far does he interfere with Citizenship? 
By John Henry Cardinal Newman. 
200 pages, paper, 20 cents. 

This book fully instructs one about the relations of Catho- 
licity to civil government, how far loyalty to the Pope can make 
one disloyal to the State. In fact all obligations arising from 
one's duty as a man, as a citizen, as a Catholic. The chapter on 
Conscience is alone worth a dozen ordinary books, so luminous 
is the statement of the inner liberty of Catholics. The book is es- 
pecially adapted to lawyers, editors, teachers, ministers, and poli- 
ticians. It will place Catholics right on the burning question of 
love of country. 

FROM THE HIGHWAYS OF LIFE. 

A series of brief but complete Narratives of Convert 
sions to the true Faith, written i?i each case by 
the Convert, 

pages, cloth, 25 cents ; paper, 10 cents. 

These are object-lessons of how the grace of God leads men 
and women to Catholicity. They are stories of honest inquiry, 
courageous struggle, and great sacrifice, taken from life. The 
charm of personal narrative makes these sketches stranger thai? 
fiction and far more interesting. 

GUIDE FOR CATHOLIC YOUNG WOMEN, 

especially for those who earn their own living. 

By Rev. George Deshon, Paulist. 
35th edition. 308 pages, cloth, 75 cents. 

The peculiar charm of this book is its simple and straightfor- 
ward earnestness. A working-girl's whole life is gone over, and 
the guidance given is of a most practical kind and in a most sym- 
pathetic spirit. It is the work of one thoroughly familiar with 
the spiritual and temporal needs of the young working-women of 
America. Full of common sense and deeply religious. The best 
recommendation the book can get is the demand every year for 
two or three new editions. It is particularly useful for distribu- 
tion in Sodalities. 



The Catholic Book Exchange, 120 West 60th St., New York. 



Sixty-five Leaflets. 

4 pp. tracts, 25 cts. per 100; $2.50 per 1,000. 8 pp., 60 cts. per 
100 ; $5 per 1,000. 12 pp., 60 cts. per 100 ; $6 per 1,000. 

RELIGIOUS INDIFFERENTISM AND ITS REMEDY. 
To refute the objection, One religion is as good as another. 4 pp. 
25 cts. per 100 ; $2.50 per 1,000. 

THE PLEA OF SINCERITY. Truth in itself the object of 
intellectual investigation. 4 pp. 25 cts. per 100 ; $2.50 per 1,000. 

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE FORLORN HOPE ; or, 
Prayer a Resource in all Danger. 4 pp. 25 cts. per 100 ; 
$2.50 per 1,000. 

WHAT SHALL I DO TO BE SAVED ? 8 pp. $5 per 1,000. 

THE PLEA OF UNCERTAINTY. Truth for all men is 
one ; therefore there can be no uncertainty. 8 pp. $5 per 1,000. 

WHAT MY UNCLE SAID ABOUT THE POPE. Who 
is to interpret the Bible, the fallible individual or the infallible 
Church ? 8 pp. $5 per 1,000. 

HOW SHALL WE FIND TRUE CHRISTIANITY? 
The Church teaching with divine authority is the rule of faith. 
8 pp. $5 per 1,000. 

CATHOLIC TRADITION. 4 pp. 25 cts. per ioo ; $2.50 
per 1,000. 

WHAT IS TO BE DONE IN SUCH A CASE ? Intem- 
perance in the family. 4 pp. 25 cts. per 100; $2.50 per 1,000. 

THE SENATORS OF SHERBURN ; or, A Lawyer's 
Rule of Faith. The Church or the Bible ? 8 pp. $5 per 
1,000. 

THE REAL PRESENCE OF CHRIST IN THE EU- 
CHARIST. 8 pp. $5 per 1,000. 

A CONVERSATION ON UNION AMONG CHRISTIANS. 
The principle of unity is submission to lawful constituted author- 
ity. 8 pp. $5 per 1,000. 

THE GOSPEL DOOR OF MERCY. How sins are for- 
given. 8 pp. $5 per 1,000. 

WHAT SHALL I DO TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN ? 
Berieve right and do right. 8 pp. $5 per 1,000. 

THE CHURCH AND CHILDREN. 8 pp. $5 per 1,000. 

A VOICE IN THE NIGHT ; or, Lessons in the Sick- 
room. Sickness a messenger of God to convert the sinner. 
8 pp. $5 per 1,000. 

THE GOSPEL CHURCH. (1) An authoritatively teaching 
Church. (2) A sacramental Church. (3) A sacrificing Church, 
12 pp. $6 per 1,000. 

WHO IS JESUS CHRIST ? The divinity of our Lord 
proved from Scripture, history, and civilization. 12 pp. $6 per 
1,000. 

THE TRINITY. Its reasonableness. The proof of its re- 
velation. 12 pp. $6 per 1,000. 

HEROISM IN THE SICK-ROOM. 4 pp. 25 cts. per 100; 
$2.50 per 1,000. 

IS THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS OF HUMAN OR 
^IVINE INSTITUTION ? 8 pp. $5 per 1,000. 



WHY DID GOD BECOME MAN ? Scotist doctrine. 8 pp. 
$5 per i. coo. 

WHO FOUNDED THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ? 4 pp. 
25 cents per 100 ; $2.50 per 1,000. 

EXCLUSIVENESS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 
Explanation of " out of the Church there is no salvation." 4 pp. 
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CHILDREN AND PROTESTANTISM. How can infants 
be saved by faith alone ? 4 pp. 25 cts. per 100 ; $2.50 per 1,000. 

HOW TO KEEP LENT. What is meant by prayer and 
fasting. 8 pp. $5 per 1,000. 

IS IT HONEST? Controversial. 4 pp. 25 cts. per 100; 
$2.50 per 1,000. 

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ? Controversial. The 
Church and the Sacraments. 4 pp. 25 cts. per 100 ; $2.50 per 
1,000. 

THE RELIGION I WANT. 4 pp. 25 cts. per 100 ; $2.50 
per 3,000. 

HOW TO HAVE A HAPPY CHRISTMAS. A good Con- 
fession is the best remedy for the blues. 8 pp. $5 per i,cod. 

HOW'S THAT ? Short explanations of Catholic doctrines 
and practices. Nos. I. and II. 4 pp. each. 25 cts. per 100 ; $2.50 
per 1,000. 

WHAT THINK YE OF MARY ? WHOSE MOTHER IS 
SHE ? 8 pp. $5 per 1,000. 

CONVERTED BY AN INFIDEL. 4 pp. 25 cts. per 100; 
£2.50 per 1,000. 

POPERY AND THE APOSTLES ; or, The Biter Bit. 
The Church of to-day is the same as the Church of the Apostles. 
4 pp. 25 cts. per ico; $2.50 per 1 000. 

THE LOVE OF JESUS CHRIST. We love Him because 
He loves us. Because of his benefits. Because He has given 
Himself to us. Because our future depends on Him. 4 pp. 25 
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THE POPE'S TEMPORAL POWER. What it means. 
Why he must be independent. Objections and answers. 4 pp. 
25 cts. per 100 ; 2.50 per 1,000. 

A SHORT READING FOR THE SICK. (1) Patience in 
pain. (2) Temptations of the sick. (3) Submit to God's will. 
(4) Hope for special help at the hour of death. 4 pp. 25 cts. per 
100 ; $2.50 per 1,000. 

IS IT TRUE ? The Bible myths of Protestants. The story 
about Latin in the Church. That our religion is all ceremony. 
That it is false because of bad popes or priests. That confession 
increases sin. That only ignorant Catholics are sincere. 4 pp. 
25 cts. per 100; $2.50 per 1,000. 

BE SURE YOU ARE RIGHT AND THEN GO AHEAD. 
Questions of Protestants about our faith and practice answered. 
4 pp. 25 cts. per 100 ; $2.50 per 1,000. 

PROGRESS IN RELIGION. The teaching Church decides 
our faith for us. 4 pp. 25 cts. per 100 ; $2.50 per 1,000. 

HOW TO GET MARRIED. Do not marry a Protestant ; 
marry a Catholic with Banns, Confession, Mass, and Holy Com- 
munion. 4 pp. 25 cts. per 100 ; $2.50 per 1,000. 



4Tfte CalHoIic World manazme.-h 

EDITED BY THE PAULIST FATHERS. 

An Illustrated Magazine of General Literature. 

ISSUED EVERY MONTH. 
$3 PER YEAR. 12Q West 60th St., NEW YORK. 

The Catholic World Magazine is the 
old-established representative organ of Catho- 
lic thought. For thirty years it has led in the 
development of intellectual life by its able, 
advanced, and AGGRESSIVE methods. Lately 
by its beautiful illustrations, its more popular 
tone, its reduced price, and its bright, enter- 
taining "get up," it has more than doubled 
its subscription list. 

We give very large discounts to Agents 
in every city, and ladies as well as men can 
make good salaries. Write for terms. 
$3 per year. 120 West 60th St., New York. 



A New Magazine for the Young Folks. 

THE YOUNG CATHOLIC. 

16 Pages. Every Two Weeks. 

BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED. 

A Wonderful Help in the Sunday-School. 

A bright little magazine distributed every second Sunday will 
secure better attendance, enliven the interest in Sunday-School 
work, and be a valuable auxiliary in educating the children. 

In quantities for Sunday-Schools at 2 cents a copy. 

New Methods. New Results. New Successes. 

THE YOUNG CATHOLIC, 
120 West 60th Street, NEW YORK. 



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